













fit " —I 



i \ % 









^ 



•i)\ 



'/■V 






'*> r 



<^ 









*!$«!C- i- 




Hr 



■^ '^^' 



I 



W 










^^ 



h^..«''v% 



n 













'^mimi^^<j2^^:Bsmm^<^ 



coflBiaMvtgi 









1« 









r'^'^'%,'^,'%,- 






r'%,'%,'%.'%.-%,'%^%,'^'%,^>C 



LIBRARY OF CONGKKSS, 









'y^& 









4f^^ 



v^r^;^?XK?ci<c£:<:g^r<i^^.?^iC^;€5^ 



KGBW^^mii 



'^^^^m':<t<^cr. cxm^m^m^^ 



■^■: 4tmm^^ 












^S^5C^<®^'x02 










k,: c^gia^<?^'i®^«a^?«:G;«is 



'«:sij^C^<(^ 









^^^3^^S:r<g^::;€a^^«jiiK'*^P' 












Y^^^ -_^^.*r^- V --^^*r;^^*5^-' 















COFYRIG^EEO? EDITION. 



THE 



|^rm| 0f i\t '^aiamu: 



ORGANIZATION, ITS COMMANDER, 

AND 

ITS CAMPAIGN. 



BT 



THE PPJNCE DE ^^OINYILLE. 



9IrattJ5lattIl from 1{)£ JFrritff), 



WITH NOTES, 



By WILLIAM HENRY HUELBEET. 



NEW YORK 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLP H ;"^-££^AS^i2^ 

No. 683 BROADWAY. 
1862. 



C4-70 

■ J'r^d 



Kntered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

In tlie Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



EDWARD O. JKNKINS, 

JPtiiitcr aiiB StciEotiipfr, 
No. 20 Nor.Tii Williaji St. 



The article of which the following pages are a translation ap- 
peared in the number of the Jievue des Deux Maudes for October 
15th, 1862. It is there entitled " Campagne de I'Armee du Poto- 
mac, Mars-Juillet, 1862," and bears the signature of "A. Trog- 
non." It is well understood in Paris that this signature is the 
tiohi de phnne of one of the princes of the House of Orleans, and 
from the internal evidence afibrded by the paper itself I have 
been led to believe that it was probably wi'itten by the Prince de 
Joinville, who accompanied his nephews, the Comte de Paris and 
the Due de Chartres, throughout the period of their service in 
tlie Army of the Union, and that it was composed upon the data 
furnished by the journals of one or both of those princes, collated 
with his own observations and recollections. I have accordingly 
accejjted the well-authenticated rumor which ascribes its author- 
ship to him. I have also taken the liberty of affixing to the 
translation a title which more fully describes the scope and 
nature of the paper. As the reader will perceive, it is a critical 
and historical sketch of the rise, progress, character and fortunes 
of the army which Avas assembled at Washington for the invasion 
of Virginia, from the time of its first organization in 1861, down 
to the end of the campaign before Richmond in 1862. 

It is written with the freedom and force of an accomplished 
military man, anxious to do justice to the merits and to point out 
the defects of an army which he has studied in the camp and in 
the field ; master of his subject ; temperate in tone, and in style 
equally free from the carelessness of the amateur, and the ped- 
antry of the professional soldier. 

Recent events have given a peculiar importance to the facts 
here presented, and it will not be easy for any candid person to 
read these pages without feeling that the causes of the military 
misfortunes which will make the year 1862 so painfully remark- 
able in our history demand the fullest and most searching inves- 
tigation. 

(8) N 



4 PREFACE, 

The failure of the Army of the Potomac to achieve either of 
the grand immediate objects which it moved from before Wash- 
ington in March to effect, the dispei-sioii, namely, of the main 
confederate army iiuder General Johnston and the occupation 
of Richmond, has been variously attributed : 

1. To the constitutional unfitness of General McClellan for the 
conduct of operations requiring boldness in the conception and 
decision in the execution. 

2. To the presumed bias of that commander's political opinions. 
Those who adopt this theory of the origin of our reverses, charge 
upon General McClellan that he has ahvays sought to avoid 
driving . the. insurgent States to the wall, in the belief that the 
S(K>thiug influence of time and the blockade would eventually 
bring them to accept terms of reconciliation and reunion. 

".,-3. To the coitstant interference of an " Aulic Council " at 
."5^,ashington. with the plans of our commanders in the field, 
an interference which when it does not positively interrupt the 
progress of operations actually begun, by depriving a general of 
some portion of the force on which his calculations were based, 
must still greatly cripple his efficiency by making it incompatible 
with common prudence for him to take serious risks and essay 
•adventurous combinations. 

; : i^.- To the superior military abilities of the Southern command- 
ers enabling them to outmanceuvre our leaders and to accumulate 
overwhelming forces upon the separate armies of an array in the 
aggregate greatly outnumbering their own. 

The testimony under these different heads of the Prince de 
Joinville may be thus summed up : 

"1. The Prince de Joinville testifies that General McClellan's 
original plan of camj^aign was in the highest degree direct and 
aggressive. 

This plan was formed at a time' when the command of the 
waters of Virginia Avas entirely in our hands, and it involved so 
rapid a concentration of the federal forces at a point within 
striking distance of Richmond as must have been followed either 
by the evacuation of that city or, by. a. decisive action in the field. 
He testifies also that when by the sudden and formidable advent 
of the Merrimac and by the retreat of Johnston from Manassas 
upon Richmond and Yorktown, this original plan was made 
impracticable. General McClellan conceived a second plan for 
turning the position at Yorktown, which was also direct and 
aggressive in its character, and which was made impracticable 



PEEPACE. 

by the sudden withdrawal of the corps cVarmee, necessary to its 
execution. 

In respect to tha operations of McClellan before Richmond, he 
testifies that it was tlie intention of that general to follow up Ms 
arrival upon the Chickahoniiny by an immediate assault in .com- 
bination with the army of McDowell, and that this intention was 
defeated by the coraj^lete separation of that army from his own 
in consequence of orders sent to McDowell from Washington. 
He gives it as his opinion, however, that greater activity and 
more rapid aggressive movements on the part of General McClel- 
lan during the months of May and June and at the battle of Fair 
Oaks, miglit possibly have resulted in the fall of Richmond, but 
this opinion he qualifies by intimating that the disposition of the 
General to instant action Avas curbed and dampened during that 
time by the influence of the checks previously imposed upon the 
develo})ment of his strategy ; and he ascribes the final extrica- 
tion of the Army of the Potomac from a position which had be- 
come untenable, to a movement in an extraordinary degree deci- 
sive and audacious. 

2. Writing after a familiar intercourse of months witli the Gen- 
eral-in-Chief of the army, in which he must necessarily have im- 
bibed his' leading -views in respect to national policy, the Prince's 
language makes it more than probable that General McClellan 
earnestly believed a prompt and decisive victory over the confed- 
erate army to be the surest if not the only means of securing the 
restoration of the Union, and that so believing, he thought it 
essential that a conciliatory temper towards the Southern people 
should precede, accompany and succeed the victory of the sword. 

3. The Prince de Joinville asserts distinctly that the interfer- 
ence of .the Government with the plans of General McClellan was 
constant, embarrassing, and of such a nature as finally to make it 
next to impossible for that General to risk the safety of the army 
under his charge in any extensive operation the success of which 
was not substantially assured in advance. 

4. The Prhice's account of the retreat of McClellan from Rich- 
mond shows that he considers the confederate Generals to have 
been completely out-manoeuvred and out-witted at that time by 
their adversary, whose concentration they did not comprehend in 
time to prevent it, and whose escape they were not able to inter- 
cept although superior to hun in numbers and in knowledge of the 
country, fighting within sight of their base, and supported by the 
active good Avill of a wliole population. 



6 PREFACE. 

So runs the evidence upon these four points of a witness whose 
competency and impartiaUty we have certainly no right or reason 
to impeach. lie may have been misinformed ; uninformed, the 
responsibihty which he assumes in pubUshing his narrative forbids 
us to suppose he can have been. 

Until the publication of authentic official documents, the paper 
here submitted to the reader must be considered to be the fullest 
and fiirest story of the great Campaign of 1862 yet given to the 
world. As such it should receive the most serious attention. 
The reputation of any one nuin or set of men is a slight thing in 
comparison with the success or failure of the nation in a war of 
life and death. If the Prince de Joinville's statements can be 
proved incorrect and his inferences unsound ; if General McClel- 
lan be really responsible by reason of his military incapacity or his 
political theories for our great disappointments, then it \vill be 
much for the nation to forgive him the past and forget him in the 
future. 

If the Prince's statements be proved correct and his inferences 
sound, they must be regarded as a substantial indictment of the 
Administration in respect to its management of the war ; and the 
removal of General IMcClellan from the command of liis army in 
the field must be pronounced a sign of evil omen on vrhich too 
much stress can hardly be laid. 

I believe the present translation, although rapidly made, will 
not be found inaccurate. I have ventured to append to it a few 
notes upon subjects connected Avith the condition of things at the 
South, in respect to which I had reason to believe myself more 
fully and correctly informed than the circumstances of the author 
pei'mitted him to be. 

W. H. H. 

New York, Nov. 15, 1862. 



Note.— Since the first edition of this translation was issued, I have received au- 
thority from Brigadier-General Rarry, Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, 
to correct the writer's statement in rejiard to the loss of guns on the retreat from Rich- 
mond (p. 93). Instead of three, the army lost but one siege-gun, an S-inch howitzer, 
the carriage of which broke down. No feature of this extraordinary retreat rcUcets 
higher credit upon the army than this brilliant achievement of the artillery servirt- 
and its chief; and as the most extravagant falsehoods upon this point have "obtained 
credence and circulation abroad, I take a particular pleasure in here recordin<; the 
truth, confident that no man out of America will more heartily rejoice in it than the 
u'lthor whom I am thus enabled to set rio-ht. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 



MiLiTAEY events succeed each other rapidly in America, 
and the public follows them with an attention which is all the 
more anxious that it does not always understand them, partly 
througli lack of knowledge of the organization of American 
armies and of the character of their commanders and their 
soldiers ; but above all, through the difficulty of getting at 
the impressions of persons who, being competent to observe 
these memorable struggles, actually took part in them them- 
selves. 

The pages here offered to the reader, will perhaps meet this 
legitimate public curiosity. They arc the sum and setting 
forth of the notes of an officer, who took part in the last bat- 
tles in Virginia, and who has never ceased to watch and fol- 
low up the grand operations of the war, in respect to w^hich, 
he will, no doubt, give us new details ; our dnty is simply 
to gather up and group the impressions and the recollections 
scattered through the numerous letters, and the private jour- 
nal of the officer in question. 

I. 

^h €xtixixan of iht i^rmw. 

On my arrival in America, the curtain had just fallen on 
the first act of the secessionist insurrection. The attack on 
Fort Sumter by the people of Charleston, had been the pro- 
logue, then came the disaster of Bull Run. Tlie army of the 



8 THE AKMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

South was encamped witliin sight of "Washington. "Works 
of defence were hastily thrown up around that Capital. The 
roar of the cannon was heard from time to time along the 
front of the line. Amid these commotions the army of the 
Potomac came into being. 

Up to this time, the Federal Government, taken by surprise, 
had only hit in haste upon certain provisional measures which 
aggravated instead of dissipating the danger. All the advan- 
tages, at the outset of the insurrection, were with the insur- 
gents. They were ready for an armed conflict, the North was 
not. In truth the work of secession had been long preparing. 
Under the pretext of a military organization to repress 
slave insurrections, the States of the South had created 
a permanent militia, ready to march at the first signal. 
Special schools had been founded in which the sons of 
the Slaveholders imbibed the insj)iration of those good 
and bad qualities which combine to form a race of sol- 
diers. Meanwhile, the northern man, reposing with confidence 
upon the regular operation of the Constitution, remained ab- 
sorbed in his own affairs behind his counter. The national 
army of the Union belonged almost entirely to tlie men of the 
South. For many years the Federal power had been in their 
hands, and they had not failed to fill, with creatures of their 
own, all the departments of its administration, and especially 
the war office and the army, Mr. Jefferson Davis, long 
Secretary at "War, had done more to accomplish this than any 
other single man. 

The disposition of the northern people facilitated his task. 
Among thelaborious and still somewhat puritanical populations 
of N^ew England, the career of arms was looked upon as that 
of an idler. The "West Point Academy enjoyed no great con- 
sideration in that part of the country, and the heads of fami- 
lies were by no means anxious to send their sons to it. Finally, 



THE AEMY OP THE POTOMAC. 1> 

on tlie eve of the crisis which was to follow Mr. lincoln's 
election, Mr. Floyd, now a General among the secessionists 
and then war Secretary under Mr. Buchanan, had taken pains 
to send to the South the contents of all the Federal arsenals, 
and to despatch the whole of the regular army to Texas, put- 
ting between the army and Washington the barrier of the 
slave States, in order to paralyze the sentiment of duty which 
might lead the soldiers to follow that small number among 
their officers who should remain loyal to their flag. Nothing 
accordingly was lacking in the precautions taken by the Con- 
federacy. Tliey had dealt with the navy as with the army. 
It was dispersed at the four corners of the globe. 

As to the Nortli, it did just nothing. Yet it had not want- 
ed warnings. For many years Secession had been openly 
preached. A curious book called the " Partisan Leader," pub- 
lished twenty years ago, is a proof of this. Under the form 
of a novel this book is a really prophetic picture of the war 
which is at this moment desolating Yirginia, a picture so 
highly colored as easily to explain the ardor with which the 
imagination of the Creole ladies has espoused the cause of the 
South. But it was believed in the North, as in various other 
places, that " all would come right." The jSTorth felt itself the 
stronger, and saw no reason for troubling itself preuuiturely. 
It was the old story of the hare and the tor;oisc. Moreover, 
in the last resort, the North counted on tlie several hundred 
thousand volunteers set down in the almanacks as represent- 
ing the military force of the country, and supposed by the 
popular mind to be irresistible. The Noi-tli was quickly un- 
deceived. The people of the South were beaten in the presi- 
dential election. They were still masters of the Senate, and 
it was not the loss of power which roused them, it was the 
wound inflicted on their pride. This was used by the ambi- 
tious managers of the party of Secession to excite the South- 



10 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

ern mind, and the standard of the insurrection was raised. 
The federal power, still passive, allowed the period for com- 
promise, the period for conciliation, and the period for ener- 
getic and instantaneous repression to roll by alike unimproved. 
On both sides the States begin to arm for the inevitable strife ; 
but the South has the warriors, the arms, the organization, the 
will and the passion. The North is impotent even to provision 
Fort Sumter, and the volunteers raised for three montlis, as if 
that was to be tlie limit of the campaign, get themselves beaten 
at Bull Run, not througli want of courage, for the instances 
of individual valor were numerous ; nor yet through the fault 
of General McDowell, who commanded them, and whose 
plans deserved success, but through the absence of organization 
and of discipline. 

After Bull Run tiiere was no room left for illusions. A 
great war was before the country. Intoxicated with pride, 
encouraged by all those who for one or another reason wished 
ill to the United States, the South it was plain would never 
again consent to return to the Union until it should liave suf- 
fered severe reverses. 

Tlie hopes of its ambitions leaders were more than realized. 
They had struck a successful vein, and nothing conld make 
them abandon it. At the ]S"orth, on the other hand, humiliation 
had opened all men's eyes. It was felt that, having on their 
side, with the superiority of population and wealth, the right 
and the legality of the question — ^having the sacred, trust of 
the Constitution to defend against a factious minority, which 
after all, only took up arms to extend slavery — they would 
become a by-word for the world if they did not resist. They 
felt, besides, that if the doctrine of secession were once admit- 
ted and sanctioned, it would be susceptible of infinite aj^pli- 
cation ; that, from one rupture to another, it would bring 
about a chaos which must very soon open the way to despo- 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 11 

tisni. They felt, in short, that it was chimerical to suppose 
that two Powers could live side by side in peace who had 
not yet made real trial of their respective strength — who 
were separated radically, notwithstanding their common 
tongue and origin, by the institution of slavery — ^the one wish- 
ing its development and the other its abolition — who were 
separated, also, by interests which no Custom House line 
could conciliate, and by the impossibility of regulating, with- 
out daily quarrels, the numerous questions connected witli the 
navigation of the Western rivers. All these reasons, obvious 
to every mind, added to the pain of wounded self-love, and 
to the novelty of a warlike movement in that land of peace, 
resulted in setting on foot the immense armament with which 
the Northern States have up to this day sustained the war 
against the powerful efforts of Secession. 

Let us pause liere before passing on to the numerous criti- 
cisms that we shall have to make, to admire the energy, the 
devotion, the spirit of courageous self-denial with which the 
population of those States — rather leading the Government 
than led by it — ^has of itself, and under the single impulse of 
its patriotic good sense, given uncounted men and money, sac- 
rificed its comforts, renounced voluntarily and for the public 
good, its tastes, its habits, even to the freedom of the press, 
and that, too, not under the influence of a momentary passion, 
not in a transport of transient enthusiasm, but coolly and for 
a distant object — that of national greatness. 

The North went seriously to work to create an army — a 
grand army. Seconded by public opinion. Congress resolved 
upon the raising of five hundred thousand men, with the 
funds necessary for the purpose. Unfortunately it could not 
command the traditions, the training and the experience 
requisite to form and m.anage such a military force. It was 
able to collect masses of men and immense material, as if by 
enchantment ; but it had not the power to create by a vote 



12 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

file spirit of discipline, of obedience, and timt iiierarcliical 
respect, without which there may be ra'med crowds, but there 
can be no army. Here is the reef upon which many gener- 
ous efforts have been dashed to pieces. Here is an original 
vice whose fatal influence we shall everywhere encounter. 
"We shall discover the germ of this vice by a rapid examina- 
tion of the machinery which was used to improvise this first 
creation. 

According to American law the Federal Government 
maintains, in time of peace, a permanent regular army. It 
may, besides, in cases of necessity, war or insurrection, call 
to its standard as many regiments of volunteers as it may deem 
expedient. The reguhir army, formed by recruiting only, 
numbered 20,000 men before the secession. The. officers, 
educated exclusively at the military school, were remarkable. 
Well educated, versed practically in their profession, under- 
standing the necessity of absolute command, they maintained 
in their small force the most vigorous discipline. This was 
an excellent nucleus for an army, but the rebellion, as I 
have before remarked, had brought on its dissolution. The 
greater part of the officers — more than three hundred — passed 
over to the South. The soldiers — all Irish or German — lost 
in the solitudes of Texas, were dispersed. From two to three 
thousand men, at most, returned from California or Utah to 
take part in the war. This was chiefly important as bringing 
back a certain nunibqr of officers who might preside over the 
organization— SM<;h as it was— of the army of v-oluntee~ra^bout 
to be raised. In Europe, where we have learned to recog- 
nize the comparative value of the regular soldier, and of this 
costly and capricious amateur soldier, who is called a volun- 
teer, the loss of the aid of the regular army, small as it was, 
would have brought us to despair, and we should have set to 
work to increase the army by enlarging its organization and 
Incorporating recruits. An army of sixty thousand regulars 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 13 

would have done more, than donlilc ov triple the number of 
volunteers; but in America they do not know this, and be- 
sides, they do not wish to know it. It would involve a re- 
nunciation of the general and deeply rooted creed, that every 
Anferican, when he wishes to do a thing, may find within 
himself, withont^any apprenticeship, the power to do it; and, 
coiisequently, there is no volunteer who, when he puts on the 
uniform, does not at the same time put on the qualities of a 
soldier. Add to this that the West Point officers, simply from 
the fact that they have received a superior education, and re- 
cognize the necessity of a hierarchy, are regarded as aristo- 
crats, and everything aristocratic is bad. Such officers were 
safe with the mercenaries who consented to obey them, and 
under their orders to keep the peace against the frontier 
tribes of Indians ; but to place under their command a great 
army, which must be reduced to the subordination of the 
camps, was to run the i-isk of grave political dangers. An 
eighteenth Brumaire is not to be made with volunteers. 
Therefore, everything having to be created, it was decided to 
create an army of volunteers— an ephemeral army, compara- 
tively inefficient, and, above all, ruinously expensive. The 
American volunteer is richly paid. His pay is $13— more 
than 65 francs — per month. Besides that, an allowance of $8 
per month is paid to his wife in his absence ; and this, it may 
be said in passing, has brought about many sudden marriages 
at the moment of departure for the army. Ordinarily there 
are no deductions from his pay for clothing or other supplies. 
The volunteer is provided with everything, and is supplied so 
liberally with rations that he daily throws away a part of 
them. One may imagine what such an army must cost. 
This would not matter if even at such an expense the country 
were well served. It is not so, however. It is ill served for 
want of discipline, not that the military laws and regulations 
were not severe enough ; but they were not enforced, and 



14 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

could not be, in consequence of tlie primary organization of 
the regiment, and of the composition of its corps of officers. 
And here we come to the essential vice of an American army. 

How is a regiment of volunteers actually formed ? As soon 
as Congress has voted the number of men, they calculate at 
Washington the quota which each State must furnish, accord- 
ing to its resources and population. This calculation being 
made, each Governor announces that there are to be so many 
regiments raised within the limits of his jurisdiction. The 
regiment of one battalion only, is the American military unit. 
Affairs are managed in this way : 

Persons present themselves offering to raise a regiment. 
Each sets forth his claims, his influence in the State, or among 
a certain portion of the population, which will enable him to 
procure easily the necessary number of men, his devotion to 
the party in powei\ etc. From among the persons thus pre- 
sented the Governor makes his choice. Generally the person 
upon whom the choice falls has laid it down as a condition 
precedent that he shall have the command of the regiment ; 
and thus Mr. So-and-So, a lawyer or a doctor, never having 
handled a sword, but feeling within himself an improvised 
vocation, becomes a colonel at the start, and puts himself in' 
connection with all the recruiting agencies and with all the 
furnishers of equipment and clothing supplies for the future 
rciriuient. The next thinj): is to find the soldiers; this is not 
so easy, for there is a great deal of rivalry. They apply to all 
their comrades, traverse the country, ai;d resort to various 
]»lans. This is done quickly and well in America, for the 
Americans have an inventive mind. Most frequently they 
find friends who, seized with the same martial ardor, promise 
to bi-iiig so many recruits if they be made — the one captain, 
the other lieutenant, another sergeant, and so forth. The 
framework is formed and is partly filled up ; it only remains 
to complete it. It is then that recourse is had to extraor- 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 15 

dinaiy measures — to those gigantic posters which set forth in 
pompous terms all the advantages to be gained by joining 
the corps. They go among the Catholic priests to procure 
Irishmen, and give the coveted privilege of sutlership to the 
individual who promises the necessary complement of men. 
Thus the regiment finds itself organized, and the lists are 
carried to tlie Governor, who approves everything. The regi- 
ment is mustered, clothed and equipped, and forwarded by 
railroad to the seat of war. Sometifnes, even frequentl}^, the 
grades are made to depend on election ; but that is generally 
only a foriiiality, as everything has been arranged beforehand 
by those interested. 

The inconveniences of this system are obvious. The officers, 
from the colonel down to the lowest in rank, do not know the 
first word of the militarj^ art, and if they have any real aptitude 
for it and any warlike qualities, these are still to be proved. 
The soldiers have no illusions on this point. "They know 
no more about it than we do, we are well acquainted with 
them," they say of those who command them. Hence, there 
is no superiority of knowledge on the part of the officer over 
the soldier, and no superiority of social position in a country 
where no such superiority is recognized. Most frequently, 
also, it is with an idea of being a candidate for political office 
that the officer has taken up arms. It is to make himself a 
name in the eyes of the voters. And these future voters are 
the soldiers. What would become of the popularity he ex- 
pects to enjoy if he were rough to the soldiers, or showed 
himself too exacting in the service? All these causes bring 
about the want of authority with officers, and the want of res- 
pect among soldiers. Of course, then, there can be neither 
hierarchy nor discipline. All this has been ameliorated by 
force of necessity, and in the school of experience. Even from 
the beginning there were exceptions to it; some colonels, im- ■ 
polled by a real vocation, or animated by an ardent patriotism, 



16 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

encceeded in overcoming the obstacles placed in tlieir path. 
Sometimes an officer of the regular army, desirous of distin- 
guishing himself, and having influence enough in his State, 
raised a regiment and obtained from it an admirable result. 
TJiiis, a young lieutenant of engineers, named Warren, was 
marvellously successful with the Fifth New York regiment, 
of which he was colonel. This regiment served as engineers 
and artillery at the siege of Yorktown, and, having again be- 
come infantry, conducted itself like the most veteran troops 
at the battles of the Chickahominy, where it lost half of its 
force. And yet these were volunteers — but they felt the know- 
ledge and superiority of their chief. Generally, however, the 
chief is simjjly a comrade who wears a different costume. He 
is obeyed in every day routine, but voluntarily. In the same 
way the soldiers don't trouble themselves about him when cir 
cumstances become serious. From the point of view of 
American equality, there is no good reason to obey him. Be- 
sides, in the eyes of the greater number this title of volunteer 
does not signify the soldier who devotes himself generously 
and voluntarily to save the country or to acquire glory, but 
rather the well-paid soldier, who only does what he wishes 
and pleases. This is so true that, although the pay and time 
of service are the same for volunteers and regulars, the re- 
cruiting of regulars has become almost impossible. All that 
class of men who enlisted when regulars alone existed, from 
a taste for camp life, now join the volunteers. On one side 
is license, on the other discipline — the choice is easily made. 
The habits created by universal suffrage also play their part 
and are reproduced on the field of battle. By a tacit agree- 
ment the regiment marches against the enemy, advances under 
fire and begins to deliver its volleys ; the men are brave, very 
brave ; they are killed and wounded in great numbers, and 
then, when by a tacit agreement they think they have done 
enough for military honor, they all march off together. The 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. IT 

colonel perhaps attempts to give a direction, an impulse, 
but generally liis efforts are in vain. As to the officers, they 
never think of it. Why should they attempt it, and vi^hy 
should they be obeyed if the majority of the regiment has 
made up its mind to retreat ? Obedience in such an army is 
like the obedience which children playing at soldiers render to 
him among their comrades whom they have made their cap- 
tain. Is any argument necessary to show the inconvenience 
of such a state of things ? ISTevertheless, the Government put 
its hand on an immense mass of armed men, a multitude 
of regiments; for the country had responded unanimously 
and vigorously to the call for volunteers. Never, we believe, 
has any nation created, of lierself, by her own will, by 
her single resources, without coercion of any kind, without 
government pressure, and in such a short space of time, so 
considerable an armament. Free governments, whatever may 
be their faults and the excesses to which they may give rise, 
always preserve an elasticity and creative power which noth- 
ing can equal. Only, the vices of organization which we have 
pointed out singularly impaired the value of this military 
gathering. 

It w^as to remedy these vices as far as possible that General 
McClellan and old officers of "West Point, who had become, 
by force of circumstances, generals of brigade or of division, 
devoted all their efforts. Regiments were brigaded by fours, 
and brigades divisioned by threes. To each division four 
batteries were given, three of them served by volunteers and 
one by regulars. The latter was to serve as a model for the 
others, and its captain took command of all the artillery of 
the division. At one time they had some idea of placing a 
battalion of regulars in each division of volunteers, to act 
the part of " Lance head," which Lord Clyde attributes to 
the European troops in the Sepoy armies ; but the idea was 
abandoned. It appeared wis^^r to keep together the only 
2 



18 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

really disciplined troops that they possessed ; besides, as it was 
made, the divisional formation was a good one, and has been 
of very great utility. It next became necessary to provide 
for the administrative services for provisions, mnnitions and 
transports, and to organize artillery reserves, tlie engineer 
corps, the pontoon corps, the topographical brigade, the tele- 
graphs and the hospitals. 

This prodigious labor was accomplished with a rapidity and 
a success which are extraordinary, when we think that the 
whole thing had to be achieved without any assistance from 
the past. i!^ot only was there nobody to be found who knew 
anything, except from books, of the management of the 
numerous threads by which an army is held together and 
moved ; not only was the country destitute of all precedents 
in the matter ; the number even of those who had travelled 
in Europe and seen for thernselves what a grand collection of 
troops is, was infinitely small. The American army had no 
traditions but those of the Mexican campaign of General 
Scott — a l)rilliant campaign, in which there were many diffi- 
culties to be overcome, but which presented nothing like the 
gigantic proportions of the present war. Moreover, in Mexico 
General Scott had with him the entire regular army, and here 
there only remained its feeble ruins. In Mexico the regulars 
were the main body, the volunteers were only the accessory, 
and, as it were, the ornament. The old general, who was one 
day asked what he then did to maintain discipline in their 
ranks, answered, " Oh, they knew that if they straggled off 
they would be massacred by the guerrillas." The two cases, 
therefore, had nothing in common, and the management of 
these great armies of volunteers, in spite of all the efforts to 
regularize them, was a i^roblem which offered many unknown 
data. 

At the South the organization of the insurrectionary forces 
presented fewer difficulties. Tlie revolutionary government 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 19 

liad q\.icldy assumed in the hands of Mr. Jefferson Davis the 
dictatorial form. Sustained by an Oligarchy of three hundred 
tliousand slaveholders, of whom he was the choice, and whose 
violent passions he personified, Mr. Davis had set himself 
actively at work to create an army fit to contend against the 
formidable preparations of the federal government. A former 
pupil of "West Point, a former General of volunteers in Mexico, 
a former Secretary of War in the Union, he had all the re- 
quisite conditions to perform liis task well. He applied to it 
liis rare capacity. He was seconded by the flower of the for- 
mer federal staff, by the more military spirit of the Southern- 
ers, and also by the assistance of all the adventurers, filibusters 
and others, whom the South had always nurtured in view of 
those continual invasions to which slavery condemns her. I 
have no idea of drawing liere a sketch of the separatist army; 
but I v/ish to point out two important difterences which mark 
its organization as compared with that of the North. The 
oflicers were chosen and nominated directly by the President, 
and were sent with the regiments to fill their positions. There 
was no comradeship between them and the soldiers. The sol- 
diers did not know them, and therefore regarded them as their 
superiors. Tliey were not men who were subsequently, in 
private life, to find themselves again their equals. In short 
these officers belonged to that class of slave owners who living 
by the labor of their inferiors and accustomed to command 
them, attached to the soil by the hereditary transmission of 
the paternal estate and of the black serfs who people it, pos- 
sess to a certain extent, the qii alities of aristocrats. In their 
hands the discipline of the army could not suffer. ISTumerous 
shootings caused discipline to be respected, and on the day 
of battle they led their soldiers valiantly, and were valiantly 
followed. In the second place, Mr. Davis quickly perceived 
that the volunteer system would be powerless to furnish him 
with enough men to sustain th b fratricidal strife into which 



) 



20 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

he liad j^lunged liis country. He came rapidly to conscri] ition, 
to forced recruiting. It was no longer a contract betwee i tlie 
soldier and liis colonel, or between the soldier and tlie State, 
which would still leave a possibility of its being annulled, and 
which brought with it absolute obligations. It was the law, 
the authority, the power of the State, which carried off all 
able-bodied men and made them march up blindly to what was 
called the defence of their country. Tliere was no hesitation 
j)ossible. Bound by the obligation of duty, the soldier became 
at once more submissive and more reconciled to the sacrifice. 
In the situation in which the South was, these measures were 
wise, and there is no doubt that they contributed at the begin- 
ning of the war to secure great advantages to its army. Never- 
theless, we are far from reproaching Mr. Lincoln for not hav- 
ing recourse to such violent measures. The leaders of an insur- 
rection recognize no obstacle, and are stopped by no scruples 
when the object is to assure the triumph of their ambitious 
views, and particularly to escape the consequences of defeat. 
They recoil before nothing, and have no repugnance to revo- 
lutionary expedients ; but Mr. Lincoln and his advisers, were 
the legitimate representatives of the nation, and if it fell to 
them to suppress a revolt, they did not wish, unless in case of 
absolute necessity, to touch the guarantees which, up to that 
time, had made the American people the happiest and freest 
people of the earth. 

II. 

plaits jof i\it Campaigit. 

The army once improvised, it next became necessary tc 
decide how to employ it — in other words, to choose the plan 
of the campaign. Tlie general plan was simple. The idea of 
conquering and occupying a territory so vast as that of the 



THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 



21 



Confederate States could not even be considered ; but for the 
purpose of esccaping the dangers, actual and possible, of such a 
formidable insurrection, it was necessary to attain three re- 
sults : to blockade efficiently the insurgent coast ; to get con- 
trol of the Mississippi river, and of the entire system of West- 
ern waters ; and, linally, to drive the rebel government out 
Eichmond, its capital. By the blockade the rebels are isolated 
from the foreigners whose sympathy had been promised them ; 
the introduction of powder and firearms is prevented ; expor- 
tation, and the resources which it might have procured, are 
stopped ; and, finally, the introduction of supplies from abrofid 
is guarded against, which would, in spite of the state of war, 
have penetrated into the North, to the great detriment of 
national manufactures and of the Federal treasury. To the 
navy belonged the duty of this blockade. It discharged that 
duty rather inefficiently at first for want of sufficient means ; 
but by degrees the surveillance grew closer and closer until it 
became difficult to evade it. 

The possession of the Mississippi was an imperious neces- 
sity. The great river and ks, affluents are the outlets of all the 
countries which they water. Tliey are the arteries of the 
Western States— States which have, up to this time, remained 
faithful to the Union, but in which their material interests 
might at length chill their enthusiasm, and speak even louder 
than their convictions. To restore the Union as a matter of 
interest, on the basis of slavery, has been for a long time past 
the programme of the Southern leaders. To abandon to them 
without a struggle the Western rivers would be to concede 
half the question. It was therefore decided to bring on a con- 
flict on this theatre. The navy recaptured ISTew Orleans by a 
brilliant coup de main. That was the principal point. The 
Federals thus put the key in their pocket. As to the course 
of the Mississippi, the task of reconquering it was confided to 
the Western armies, admirably seconded by Commodore 



22 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

Foote's flotilla of iron-clad batteries and steam rams. In 
those regions the war assumed quite a new character. So 
long as they were carried on only hy water the operations 
were very rapid. The enemy could not intercept the mag- 
nificent navigable highways so favorable to attack which the' 
great rivers of the West supplied. By water Columbus was 
besieged, whilst by quickly ascending the Tennessee and Cum- 
berland rivers, the communications of the rebel army assigned 
to the defence of that important post, were cut. Once isolated 
from its railroads, that army had to retreat southwards. It 
thus retired from position to position, as fast as the Northern 
flotilla descended the river, and as the jSTorthern army seized 
upon the princii)al railroad branches. The march of the 
Federals only slackened when, being able to advance no far- 
ther by navigable waters, parallel to the Mississippi, such as 
the Tennessee, they had to reconstruct, as they went along, 
the railroads necessary for their supplies, which the enemy 
had destroyed in falling back. 

The last operation remained — to drive out of Richmond the 
insurrectionary government. That government, on being 
concentrated in the hands of Mr. Davis, took the form of a 
dictatorship, and thus gave to its seat the importance of a 
capital. There converge all the great railroad and telegraph 
lines. Thence, for a year past, have all orders and despatches 
been dated. To force the Confederate government to abandon 
that capital would be to inflict upon it an immense check — in 
the eyes of Europe particularly it would have taken away its 
jM'cstige. Should this attack have been ventured on as soon 
as the means supposed to be sufficient were provided, w^ithout 
awaiting the results of the blockade and of the Mississippi 
campaign ? On this question opinions were di 'idcd. Some 
said " yes,'' arguing thus : that an insurrection should never 
be given the time to establish itself; that the Federal army, 
with its defective organization, would be no better in March 



THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 23 

than in JSToveuiber ; that a splendid success on the part of the 
I^orth, following close upon Bull Run, might tinish the war at 
one blow, by permitting a great effort at conciliation be- 
fore either side became too much embittered. Others said 
" no." According to them the great work of reducing the 
insurrection should be performed on the coast and on the 
Mississippi. The Richmond campaign, undertaken in the 
spring, with the Army of the Potomac, made hardier by a 
winter passed in tents, and recovered from the fatal impressions 
of Bull Run, would be the coup de grace to Secession. The 
latter course was chosen, either as the result of real delibera- 
tion, or of necessity from not having decided in time to act 
during the fine weather of the autumn of 1861. 

And here I may point out, in passing, a characteristic trait 
of the American people — that is, as well in regard to the peo- 
ple as to an agglomeration of individuals— delay. This delay 
in resolving and acting, so opposed to the promptitude, the 
decision, the audacity to which the American, considered as 
an individual, had accustomed us, is an inexplicable phen- 
omenon which always causes me the greatest astonishment. 
Is it the abuse of the individual initiative that kills the 
collective energy ? Is it the habit of calculating only on one's 
self and of acting only for one's self that renders them hesi- 
tating and distrustful when they must act with tlie assist- 
ance of others ? Is it the never having learned to obey that 
makes it so difficult to command ? Doubtless somethiuo- of 
all these causes, and other causes still that escape us, must com- 
bine in producing this result, as strange as it is unaccountable ; 
but this delay in action whicli, besides, appears to belong to the 
Anglo-Saxon race, is atoned for by a tenacity and a persever- 
ance which failure does not discourage. 

Let us, then, leave tlie federal fleets occupied in blockading 
the rebel coast, in recapturing New Orleans, in aiding General 
Halleck to reconquer the course of the Mississippi, and let us 



24 THE AKMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

follow tlie career of the Army of the Potomac, destined to en- 
gage the great confederate army and to wrest from it, if pos- 
sible, the possession of the Virginian capital. The winter had 
passed, for the Northern soldiers, in the work of organization, 
of drilling, of provisioning; besides, they had constructed 
aronnd Washington a series of works, of detached forts (to use 
a well-known expressio .1) which, armed with powerful artillery, 
would protect the capital from a sudden assault, even though 
the Army of the Potomac might be absent. The construction 
of these works furnished scope for thought to those who sought 
to penetrate the projects of the General ; but everything had 
lono- been so quiet at "Washington that it was only casually 
that the idea of entering on a campaign presented itself. 
The enemy still occupied, in great force, his positions of Ma- 
nassas and Centreville, and for six months past nothing but un- 
important skirmishes had occurred between the two armies. 
Things were in this condition when, on the evening of the 9th 
of March, one of my friends, tapping me on the shoulder, 
said : " You don't know the news? The enerny has evacuated 
Manassas, and the array sets out to-morrow." 'Next day, in 
reality, the whole city of Washington was in commotion. A 
mass of artillery, of cavalry, of wagons, blocked up the 
streets, moving towards the bridges of the Potomac. On the 
sidewalks were seen officers bidding tender farewells to weep- 
ing ladies. The civilian portion of the population looked 
coldly on this departure. There was not the least trace of en- 
thusiasm among them. Perhaps this was due to the rain, 
which was falling in torrents. 

On the long bridge, in the midst of several batteries tliat 
were laboriously defiling across this bridge which is eternally in 
ruins, I met General McClellan, on horseback, with an anxious 
air, riding alone, without aids-de-camp, and escorted only by 
a few troopers. . le who could that da}^ have read the Gen- 
eral's soul would have seen there already something of that 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 25 

bitterness which subsequently was to accumulate so cruelly 
upon him. 

Beyond the bridge we found the whole army in motion 
towards Fairfax Court House, where a great part of it en- 
camped that evening. The cavalry pushed on as far as Cen- 
treville and Manassas, which it found abandoned. The enemy 
v^'a's not come up with anywhere ; he had had too greatl}'- the 
start of us. The head-quarters were established as well as 
possible at Fairfax, a pretty village, with large frame houses 
standing apart and surrounded by gardens. The popnlation 
had fled at our approach, almost without an exception. The 
next day I accompanied a cavalry reconnoissance to Centre- 
ville, where I saw the immense barracks which the Confede- 
rates had occupied during the winter, and to Manassas, whose 
smoking ruins left on the mind a deep impi'ession of sadness. 
On our return we visited the battle field of Bull Run. Gene- 
ral McDowell was with us. He could not restrain his tears at 
tlie sight of those bleaching bones, which recalled to him so 
vividly the cruel recollection of liis defeat. 

While we were making these promenades grave events were 
occurring in tlie highest regions of the army. There exists in 
the American army, as in the English, a commander-in-chief 
who exercises over the head of all the generals, a supreme 
authority, regulates the distribution of the troops and directs 
military operations. These functions, which have been greatly 
curtailed in the British array, since the Crimean war, were 
still exercised with all their vigor in America. From the aged 
General Scott, who had long honorably discharged them, they 
had passed to General McClellan. We learned on reaching 
Fairfax, that they liad been taken away from liim. It is easy 
to understand the diminution of force and the restrictions upon 
his usefulness, thus inflicted upon the general-in-chief byablow 
in the rear at the very outset of his campaign. 

Yet this was but a part of the mischief done him. McClellan 



26 THE ARMV OF THE POTOMAC. 

liad lung known, better than anybody else, the real strength 
of the rebels at Manassas and Centreville. He was perfectly 
familiar whh the existence of the "wooden cannon" by which 
it has been pretended that he was kept in awe for six months. 
But he also knew that till the month of April the roads of 
Virginia are in such a state that wagons and artillery can only 
be moved over them by constructing plank roads, a tedious 
operation, during which the enemy, holding the railways, 
could either retreat, as he was then actually doing, or move 
for a blow upon some other point. In any event, had Mc- 
Clellan attacked and carried Centreville, pursuit was impos- 
sible and victory would have been barren of results. A single 
bridge burned would have saved Johnston's whole army. 
Such are the vast advantages of a railway for a retreating 
army — advantages which do not exist for the army which pur- 
sues it. 

We have the right, we think, to say that McClellan never in 
tended to advance upon Centreville. His long determined pu 
pose was to make Washington safe by means of a strong garrison, 
and then to use the great navigable waters and immense naval 
resources of the North to transport the army by sea to a point 
near Kichmond. For weeks, perhaps for months, this plan 
had been secretly maturing. Secresy as well as pi-omj)tness, 
it will be understood, was indispensable here to success. To 
keep the secret it had been necessary to confide it to few per- 
sons, and hence had arisen one great cause for jealousy of the 
General. 

Be this as it may, as the day of action drew near, those 
who suspected the General's project, and were angry at not 
being informed of it ; those wdiom his promotion had excited 
to envy ; his political enemies ; (who is without them in Amer- 
ica?) in short all those beneath or beside him who wished him 
ill, broke out into a chorus of accusations of slowness, inaction, 
incapacity. McClellan, with a patriotic courage which I have 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 27 

always admired, disdained these accusatious, and made no re- 
ply. He satisfied himself with pursuing his preparations in 
hiborious silence. But the moment came in which, notwith- 
standing tlie loyal support given him by the President, that 
functionary could no longer resist the tempest. A council 
of war of all the divisional generals was held ; a })laii of 
campaign, not that of McCIellan, was proposed and discussed. 
McClellan was then forced to explain his projects, and the 
next day they were known to the enemy. Informed no doubt 
by one of those thousand female spies who keep up his com- 
munications into the domestic circles of the federal enemy, 
Jolmston evacuated Manassas at once. This was a skillful 
manoeuvre. Incapable of assuming the offensive ; threatened 
with attack either at Centreville, where defence would be 
useless if successful, or at Richmond, the loss of which would 
be a grave check, and unable to cover both positions at once, 
Johnston threw his whole force before the latter of the 
two. 

For the Army of the Potomac this was a misfortune. Its 
movement was unmasked before it had been made. Part of 
its transports were still frozen up in the Hudson, Such being 
the state of affairs, was it proper to execute as rapidly as pos- 
sible the movement upon Richmond by water, or to march 
iipon Richmond by land ? Such was the grave question to be 
settled by the young general in a miserable room of an aban- 
doned house at Fairfax within twenty-four hours. And it was 
at this moment that the news of his removal as general-in- 
chief reached him ; the news, that is, that he could no longer 
count upon the co-operation of the other armies of the Union, 
and that the troops under his own orders were to be divided 
into four grand corps under four separate chiefs named in 
order of rank, a change which would throw into subaltern 
positions some young generals of division who had his personal 
confidence. It is easy to see that here was matter enough to 



28 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

cast a cloud upon the firmest mind. But the General's reso- 
lution was promptl}' taken. 

To follow the confederates by land to Richmond at this sea- 
son of the year was a material impossibility. An incident 
had just proved this to be so. Gen. Stonemau, with a flying 
column, had been sent in pursuit of the enemy. This column 
came up with the enemy on the Rappahannock, along the 
railway to Gordonsville, and had two engagements with him 
of no great importance. Then came the rain. The fords were 
swollen, the bridges carried away, the water-courses could no 
longer be passed by swimmiug; they were torrents. Stone- 
man's column began to suffer for want of provisions, and its 
situation was perilous. In order to communicate with the 
army Stonemau had to send two of McClellan's aides-de-camp, 
who had accompanied him, across a river on a raft of logs 
tied together with ropes. 

Such was the country before the arm3\ Furthermore, the 
enemy was burning and breaking up all the bridges. Now 
with the wants of the American soldier and the usual extrav- 
agance of his rations, and with the necessity of transporting 
everything through a country where nothing is to be found, 
and where the least storm makes the roads impassable, no 
army can live unless it supports its march upon a navigable 
water-course or a railway. In Europe our military admiv.is- 
tration assumes that the transportation service of an army of 
one hundred thousand men can only provision that army for 
a three days' march from its base of operations. In America 
this limit must be reduced to a single day. An American 
army, therefore, cannot remove itself more than one day's 
march from the railway or the water-course by whicli it is 
supplied ; and if the road which it is taking happens to be 
interrupted by broken bridges it must wait till the}- are re- 
paired, or move forward without food and without ammuni- 
tion. I need only add tliat upon the roads which led to Rich- 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 29 

moiid there were viaducts which it would have required six 
Aveeks to reconstruct. 

The land march was therefore abandoned and we came back 
to the movement bj water. But this operation also was no 
longer what it had been when McClellan had conceived it. 
The revelation of his plans to the enemy had allowed the lat- 
ter to take his precautions. The evacuation of Manassas had 
preceded instead of following the opening of the federal cam- 
paign. The movement by water could no longer be a sur- 
prise. Unfortunately it was now also to lose the advantages 
of a rapid execution. 

A few days had been half lost in a useless pursuit of the 
enemy while the transports were assembling at Alexandria. 
At last they were assembled and the order came to embark. 
But here a new misunderstanding awaited the General. He 
had been promised transports which could convey 50,000 men 
at a time. He found vessels hardly equal to the conveyance 
of half that number. Instead of moving at once, as McClellan 
liad intended, a whole army with its equipage, a number of 
trips had to be made. The embarkation began March IT. 
The force consisted of eleven divisions of infantry, 8,000 to 
10,000 strong ; one division of regulars (inf. and cav.) 6,000 
strong ; 350 pieces of artillery. The total eifective force may 
have been 120,000 men. At the moment of departure a whole 
division was detached to form, we know not why, an inde- 
pendent command under General Fremont in the mountains 
of Yirginia. We shall see the Potomac army successively 
undergo other not less inexplicable diminutions. But we 
anticipate. 

A fortnight was required to move the army to Fortress 
Monroe. This point was chosen because the apparition of the 
Merrimac, and her tremendous exhibition of her strength, had 
made it impossible to regard the federal navy as absolutely 
mistress of the waters of Yirginia. 



30 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

Fortreps Monroe is a regular citadel, built of stone, wliicli 
occupies the southern point of the Virginian peninsula, and has 
remained in the hands of the Federal Government since the 
outbreak of the war. This fortress, crossing its fire with that 
of the Rip Raps, a fort built on an artificial island, commands 
the passage from the Atlantic to Hampton Roads, and thence 
by the James river to Richmond, or bj the Elizabeth to Nor- 
folk, where the Merrimac was then lying. It was in these 
interior waters that the naval battles had occurred which have 
filled such a place in public attention, and which exercised 
upon the future of the Army of the Potomac so serious an in- 
fluence, that it will not perhaps be improper to give them a 
place in this narrative. 

I shall not describe tlie Merrimac, which everybody now 
knows. I M'ill simply remind the reader that she was an old 
and very large screw steam frigate, razeed to the water line, 
and covered with an iron roof, inclined just far enough to throw 
oif any ball which might strike her. In this roof portholes 
were made for 100-pounder Armstrong guns, and for other 
pieces of very heavy calibre. The bows were armed with an 
iron spur, resembling that of the ancient galleys. On the 8th 
of March, the Merrimac, escorted by several iron-clad gun- 
boats, leaves the Elizabeth river and steei's straight for the 
mouth of the James, where lay anchored the two old-fashioned 
sailing frigates, the Cumberland and Congress, Both open 
with full broadsides upon the unexpected enemy, but without 
effect ; the balls ricochet from the iron roof. The Merrimac 
keeps quietly on, and at a speed of no more than from four to 
five knots strikes her spur into the side of the Cumberland. 
It is a singular fact that the shock was so slight as to be 
scarcely ])erceptible on board tlie Merrimac ; but it had smit- 
ten the federal frigate to death. She was seen to careen and 
go down majestically, carrying with her two hundred men of 
her crew, who, to the last moment, worked their useless guns; 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 31 

a grand and glorious spectacle ! Bat in this fatal shock the 
Merriniac had broken her spur. Was this her reason for not 
even atteni])ting to sink the Congress? It is at least certain 
tjiat she confined herself to an artillery duel with the latter 
frigate. Encumbered with the dead and the dying the Con- 
gress set her sails, ran ashore, hanled down her flag, and burst 
into flames. In attempting to capture part of her crew, the 
sailors of the Merrimac were exposed to a musketry fire from 
the shore, and a ball struck her brave and skillful commander, 
Captain Buchanan. 

Meanwhile, the federal squadron united in Hampton Roads, 
got under weigh to come to the help of their unfortunate com- 
panions in th.e James river: but this squadron could afford 
them but little help. It was composed of three frigates, of 
which one alone, the Minnesota, was in a condition to be of 
any service ; this vessel was a screw frigate of the size of the 
Merrimac, but stie was not iron-clad. The two others, the 
Roanoke, a screw frigate which had lost her mainmast and 
tlie St. Lawrence, an old sailing frigate, were oidy good to be 
destroyed. Both of these vessels, after fruitless efforts to reach 
the scene of action, and after partially running aground, gave 
up the attempt and returned to their anchorage. As to the 
Minnesota, which might have had some chance against the 
Merrimac, not with her guns, but by using her superior speed 
to run liei- aboard and sink her by the shock, she drew six 
feet of water more than the Merrimac, and obeyed her helm 
very badly wlien she had no more than one foot of water un- 
der her keel, and so she, too, ran aground in a very dangerous 
situation. There is no doubt that if the Merrimac had attacked 
her here she would liave shared the fate of the Cumberland 
and the Congress. The Merrimac, probably to ave.ige her 
captain, remained off the camp of Newport Kews, shelling 
that and tlie batteries, aiid then returned to Norfolk, where 
she went in for the night, probably intending to come out the 



32 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

next day and finish her work of destruction. But during tlie 
night the Monitor arrived. 

I must ask to be pardoned for the familiar comparison wliich 
I am about to use to give the reader an idea of this singular 
vessel. 

Everybody knows the cylindrical Savoy biscuits covered with 
chocolate paste, which are a principal ornament of every pastry 
cook's shop. Let the reader imagine one of these biscuits 
placed in an oblong plate, and he will have an exact idea of 
the external appearance of the Monitor. The Savoy biscuit 
stands for an iron tower pierced with two openings through 
wliich peer the muzzles of two enormous cannons. This tower 
is made to turn upon its axis by a very ingenious contrivance, 
in such a fashion as to direct its fire on any point of the hori- 
zon. As to the oblong plate on which the biscuit reposes, this 
is a kind of lid of iron set on at the water level upon the hull 
which contains the engine, the storage for provisions, and for 
the crew, and the displacement of the hull supports the whole 
structure. From a distance the tower only is visible, and this 
floating tower, so novel in appearance, was the first thing 
which greeted the Merrimac and her comrades when, on the 
morning of the 9tli of March, they came back to give the 
final blow to the Minnesota, which was still ashore, and pro- 
bably to work further ruin. 

The two hostile ships, Jamestown and Yorktown, advanced 
first, with that sort of timid curiosity which a dog displays 
when he comes near an unknown animal. They had not long- 
to wait, two flashes sprang from the tower, and were followed 
by the hissing of two 120-pound balls. ISTo more was needed 
to send the two scouts flying back. The Merrimac, also, at 
once perceived that there was work ahead, and ran boldly 
down to meet this unexpected adversary. Then began the 
duel which has been so much discussed, and which seems des- 
tined to bring on so great a revolution in the naval art. From 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 33 

the firs!:, the two tilters felt that they must fight at close quar- 
ters ; but, even at a few yards distance, they seemed to be 
equally iuvuhierable. The balls ricochetted and struck with- 
out appearuig to leave any trace but the very slightest bruises. 
Round shot of 120 pounds, conical 100-pounders, Armstrong 
balls, nothing went through. Then the Merriniac, trying to 
take advantage of her huge mass, undertook to sink her enera}'- 
by taking her violently in flank. But she could not get 
Bufiicient way. The Monitor, short, agile, easily handled, ran 
up to her, ran around her, escaped her blows with a speed 
which the Merrimac, from lier excessive length, could not at- 
tain. ISTothing could be more curious than to see the two ad- 
versaries turning one about the other, the little Monitor 
describing the inner circle, both equally watchful for the 
weak point of the enemy against which to discharge at point 
blank one of their enormous projectiles. " It was for all the 
world," said an eye-witness, "like the fight of Heenan with 
Sayers." So the conflict went on with no visible results for 
several hours. Once, only, the Merrimac succeeded in strik- 
ing the side of the Monitor with her bows ; but the Monitor 
wheeled around under the shock like a floating shell, and a 
very slight indenture left upon her plating was the only 
damage caused by this tremendous concussion. The exhaus- 
tion of the combatants put an end to this struggle. The con- 
federates returned to Norfolk, leaving the Monitor in posses- 
sion of the field of battle. The Minnesota and the whole 
flotilla in Hampton Roads were saved, the pigmy had held his 
own against the giant. It remained to be seen if the latter 
would make another effort when the stakes should be more 
tempting, when, instead of seeking to destroy one or two 
.shi]DS of war, there should be a chance of preventing the 
disembarkation of a whole army of invasion. 

These were the circumstances in which I arrived at Fortress 
Monroe. Soon the Roads were filled with vessels coming 
3 



34 THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

from Alexandria or Annapolis, and filled, some Avith soldiers, 
some with jiorses, cannon and munitions of all kinds. Some- 
times I counted several hundred vessels at the anchorage, and 
among tliem twenty or twenty-five large steam transports 
waiting for their turn to come up to the quay and laud the fif- 
teen or twenty thousand men wliom they brought. The reader 
may judge how fearful would have been the catostroplie had 
the Merrimac suddenly appeared among this swarm of ships, 
striking them one after another and sendins: to the bottom these 
human hives with all their inmates ! The federal authorities 
both naval and military here underwent several days of the 
keenest anxiety. Eveiy time that a smoke was seen above the 
trees which concealed the Elizabeth river, men's hearts beat 
fast; but the Merrimac never came ; she allowed the landing 
to take place without opposition. 

Why did she do tliis? 

She did not come because her position at Norfolk as a con- 
stant menace secured without any risk two results of great 
importance. In the first place she kept paralysed in Hampton 
Eoads tlie naval forces assembled to join the land army in the 
attack upon Yorktown : in the second place, and this was her 
principal object, she deprived the federal army of all the 
advantages which the possession of the James would have 
secured to it in a campaign of which Eichmond was the 
base. 

No doubt, if the Merrimac had gone down to the Roads and 
destroyed the fleet there assembled, she would have achieved 
an immense result, but all the chances would not have been 
with her in such an enterprise. In the first place, the Merri- 
mac would have encountered tlio Monitpr. Ship to ship she 
did not fear this enemy: the Monitor's armament had proved 
impotent against her armor and would prove so again ; and if 
she had not succeeded in sinking the Monitor at the first shock 
she had taken her measures to secure better luck the next time. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 35 

The expedient adopted was a suljniarine spur of hammered 
steel, ten feet long witli which slie would have reached the 
hull of the Monitor below her iron cover. Of course the 
latter floating at the water level and without compartments 
must have gone down as soon as she fairly made water. But 
the Monitor would have had new auxiliaries in a new conflict 
When the Merrimac first came out, as she was seen to make 
nothing of piercing the Cumberland and sinking that unlucky 
ship, it had instantly occurred to the federals that in the ab 
sence of vessels constructed like herself the best means of fight 
ing her would be to employ large vessels of great speed, which 
might be brought together to the number of five or six and 
driven against her as soon as she should make her appearance. 
The engines of these ships once set in motion, only five or six 
men would be required to guide them. The men and the 
ships were ready. Had the Merrimac appeared they would 
have run down upon her at twice her speed. One at least 
must have succeeded in striking her broadside and would have 
infallibly sunk he-r, for her cuirass offered no defence against 
such an attack, or must have run her aboard at the stern and 
deranged her screw when the Monitor would have had her at 
her mercy. Other precautions had been taken. A net-work 
of submarine cordag-e had been set at the mouth of the Eliza- 
beth river, and this would probably not have failed to sweep 
around the Merrimac's screw and paralyse its working. All 
these things, but especially the five or six large vessels with 
steam always up, and always on the watch like a pack of dogs 
straining at the leash, had brought the confederate authorities 
to reflection. For my own part, I am perfectl}^ satisfied that 
if the Merrimac had ventured into the deep water, beyond the 
shoals which obstruct the entrance of the James and Eliza- 
beth, where her adversaries could get way upon them, she 
would have gone down in a few moments. The federal officei's 
appreciating the importance of the object aimed at were deter 



36 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

mined 1:o sacrifice their ships and with their ships their own 
lives to attain it. 

In a w^ord, the American navy might prevent the Merrimac 
from coming into deep water and interfering with the mili- 
tary operations, of which the York river was the destined 
theatre. But the Merrimac, on the other hand, stood in tlie 
Wiiy of similar operations on the James. This was an im- 
mense service to be rendered by a single ship ! We have 
seen above how impossible it became to move forward the 
army of the Potomac directly and by land upon Richmond, 
w^hen the railway lines, by which it was to be supplied and 
its different parts united, were interrupted. Here we see the 
direct road to Richmond by water blocked by a vessel, a 
wreck happily rescued from the destruction of the ISTorfolk 
navy yard, fished up half burned from the bottom of a dock, 
and transformed by hands as intelligent as they were daring, 
into a formidable w^arlike machine. Instead of moving up the 
bank of the James river to Richmond rapidly under the escort 
and with the support of a powerful flotilla, here was the 
whole federal army conij)elled to disembark under great perils 
at Fortress Monroe in order to take the practicable but long 
and round-about road of the York river. "We were to be 
forced into going first to Yorktowu, an obstacle to be removed 
bv arms, and then into ascending the York and the Pamun- 
key to the head waters at "White House. From this point 
■where w^e must leave our gunboats, we were then to follow 
the line of the York river railway, a road on which there 
were happily no bridges, and which it was not therefore easy 
to cut, but which traverses an unwholesome region, and offers 
the formidable barrier of the Chickahominy river at a few- 
miles from Richmond. 

A sure and rapid operation was thus converted into a long 
and hazardous campaign, simply because we had lost on one 
point, and for a short time, the control of the water. Every 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 37 

body had doubted the efficiency of iron-clads, and nobody 
had thought much of the Merrimac before we learned what 
she was. This skepticism was cruelly punished. In the West 
the armies of the Union were going on from success to suc- 
cess, thanks to the cooperation, energy, and enterprise of the 
navy, admirably seconded by the geographical formation of 
the country. Here things were very diiferent. A single suc- 
cess of the confederates by sea, a single blow which they had 
succeeded in striking by surprise, was destined perhaps to 
paralyze the whole federal army, to make it lose great geo- 
graphical advantages equal to those which existed in the 
West, and to compromise, or at least to postpone the success 
of its operations ; so true is it that experience has not yet 
taught even the most experienced maritime nations all that is 
to be gained by the cooperation of a well-organized navy in 
wars by land ! 



III. 



Whilst we were thus waitinsr and waiting in vain for the 
Merrimac, the army was landing at Fortress Monroe, now the 
scene of a prodigious activity. By the 4th of April, six divi- 
sions, the cavalry, the reserve, and an immense number of 
wagons had been landed. The General-in-Chief who had 
arrived the evening before, put them at once in motion. 
Keyes, with three divisions took the road which leads along 
the banks of the James river. McClellan with the rest of the 
army followed the direct road to Yorktown. We came at 
once upon the ruins of Hampton, burned down some months 
before, a la I^ostopc/mi, by the confederate G-eneral Magru- 
der. We were informed that he still commanded the garrison 
of Yorktown and the Peninsula. Magruder, like all the 



38 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

confederate leaders, had belonged to tlie regular army of the 
Union down to the moment of the insurrection. His former 
comrades, now at the head of the federal troops, were familiar 
w^ith his habits and character, and sought to infer from them 
the course he would pursue. This reciprocal knowledge 
which the chiefs of the tw^o armies possessed of each other, 
the result of a career begun in common in early youth at the 
military school, and pursued either on the battle-field or in 
the tedious life of frontier garrisons, was certainly a singular 
trait of this singular war. Some people built up their hopes 
of a final reconciliation upon these old intimacies, but such 
hopes were not to be realized. 

Another not less curious trait of the war, which appeared in 
the outset of the campaign and was constantly reproduced, 
was the complete absence of all information in regard to the 
country and to the position of the enemy, the total ignorance 
imder which we labored in regard to his movements, and the 
number of his troops. The few inhabitants we met were 
hostile and dumb ; the deserters and negroes generally told 
us much more than they knew in order to secure a welcome, 
and as we had no maps and no knowledge of localities, it was 
impossible to make anything of their stories, and to reconcile 
their often contradictory statements. 

We were here twenty-four miles from Yorktown, and we 
could not learn what works the enemy had thrown up, nor 
what was his force within them. This was the more amazing 
that Fortress Monroe had always been held by a strong gar- 
rison, which ought to have been able to obtain some inform- 
ation or to make some reconnoissance in this direction. But 
by a strange aberration, this fortress now become the base of 
operations of the Army of the Potomac, had been specially 
sequestered from the command of General McClellan, together 
with its garrison, although the General in charge of it was 
his inferioi- in rank. Hence arose military susceptibilities 



THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 39 

whicli were by no mcjans favorable to the exctiange of con- 
fidential communications. 

So the Army of the Potomac moved on in the dark 
toward Yorktown. We were two days on the road. The 
column of the General-in-Chief had passed some fortified 
positions abandoned by the enemy. A few horsemen were 
occasionally seen at rare intervals. No sooner had we come 
under the walls of Yorktown than we were arrested by the 
cannon. A few gunboats, which had appeared at the mouth 
of York river, had found it guarded by some forty pieces of 
heavy calibre. The naval officers concluded that they could 
not pass this battery • the investment of the place by water 
must consequently be abandoned. When we undertook to 
invest it by land, we came upon a series of works stretching 
across the peninsula, on the edge of a marshy stream, called 
Warwick Creek, and high enough to make investment im- 
possible. The confederates had dammed this marshy stream 
in places so as to convert it into a pond, and their dams, with 
other accessible points, were defended by artillery, redoubts, 
and rifle-pits. Abattis had been formed in front of these re- 
doubts and upon the opposite side of the marsh so as to 
secure a wide range for the guns. 

General Keyes, in trying to pass the river Warwick, 
had been the first to encounter this line of defence. His 
march had been very slow. TJie country, perfectly flat, and 
covered with marshy forests, was only traversed by a few 
roads scarce worth}^ of the name. The rain, falling in tor- 
rents, unusual at this season of the year, had made these 
roads, if we must so call them, completely impracticable. 
The infantry could contrive to get on by marching in the 
water through the woods, but as soon as two or three wagons 
had made ruts in the ground, no wheeled vehicle could move 
an inch. Of course all movement was impossible, for w^ 
could not leave the wagons. The country was utterly de- 



40 THK ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

serted. Except M-ater and food, it supplied ns with nothing. 
The soldiers, unaccustomed either to long marches or to carry 
their ammunition, carried but two days' provisions. These 
exhausted, the wagons were tlieir only resource. Then it was 
that we had to make what in America are called corduroy 
roads. These are made by cutting down trees of the same 
size, a few inches in diameter, and laying them side by side 
on the ground. All the infantry, not on duty at the advanced 
posts, were employed, working up to their knees in the mud 
and water, upon this Herculean labor, and they got through it 
wonderfully. Here the American pioneer was in his element ; 
the roads were made as if by enchantment. The cannon and 
the wagons came in slowly indeed, but they came in where it 
seemed an impossibility they ever should do so. At night 
the troops could find no dry corner for their bivouac. They 
had to sit down on the trunks of felled trees, or to construct 
with logs a sort of platform, on which they snatched a ver}" 
precarious rest. I remember to have seen a general of division 
whose whole establishment consisted of five or six pine 
branches, one end stuck in the mud, or rather in the water, 
the other resting on a tree. Here he slept with an indian- 
rubber cloak over his head. Marchinsj alonjj in this fashion, 
we reached the confederate lines, which opened on us at 
once with a sharp fire of artillery. We replied, but without 
making any impression on the well-defined works which 
covered, the hostile cannon. The creek had been recon- 
noitred and found impassable by infantry, both on account of 
the depth of water and of its marshy borders, in which the 
troops would have been mired under a cross-fire of numbers 
of sharpshooters, concealed in the woods and behind the em- 
bankments. 

Throughout the seven miles of the confederate lines we en- 
countered the same attitude of alert defence. Everywlicre 
cannon and camps. Of course the inference was that we woru 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 41 

arrested by forces apparently fonnidable and before a position 
not easily to be carried. But tins case had been foreseen. Ir 
order to gain time, and avoid the tedium of a siege, General 
McClellau had thought out the means of turning the position. 
The enemy held the James, with the Merrimac and his sun 
boats ; the York was closed by the Yorktown and Gloucester 
Point batteries. Nevertheless, by a disembarkation on the 
Severn, beyond Gloucester, we might carry the latter position 
and open the way of the federal gunboats into the river York. 
A subsequent movement up the left bank, in the direction of 
West Point, would put us so far in the rear of the army charg- 
ed with the defence of tlie lines of Yorktown, that it would 
have been in a most perilous position. This accomplished, 
the confederates must have abandoned Gloucester, and fallen 
back hastily upon Richmond. The execution of this cou^ de 
main had been left to a corps of the army commanded by 
General McDowell. This corps was to be the last to embark 
at Washington, and it was calculated that it ought to reach 
Yorktown in a body on its transports at the moment when the 
rest of the army, moving by land, should appear before that 
post from Fortress Monroe. 

Instead of finding it, we received the inexplicable and as 
yet unexplained intelligence that this corps, 35,000 strong, had 
been sent to another destination. The news was received 
in the army with stupefaction, although the majority could 
not foresee the deplorable consequences of a step taken, it 
must be supposed, with no evil intention, but certainly with 
inconceivable recklessness. Fifteen days before, this measure, 
although it must always have been injurious, would have been 
much less so. We might have made arrangements upon a 
new basis. Taken when it was it deranged a whole system of 
machinery fairly at work. Among the divisions of McDow- 
ell's corps, there was one, that of Franklin, T^hicli was more 
regretted than all the others, as M^ell on account of the troops 



42 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

themselves, as of their commanders. The General-in-Chief had 
bestowed special pains on its organization during the winter, 
and earnestly demanded its restoration. It was sent back to 
him without a word of explanation, precisely as it had been 
detached from him. This fine division, 11,000 strong, arrived, 
and for a moment the General thought of intrusting to it alone 
the Gloucester expedition. But this intention was renounced. 

Then came the reflection, that somewdiere in these seven 
miles of confederate intrenchments, there must be a weak 
spot. 

Could this spot be found and forced, the usual result in such 
cases would probably come to pass. The enemy at either ex- 
tremity would suppose themselves to have been turned, and 
would become demoralized. If we then continued to pour a 
constantly increasing force of our troops through the opening 
thus made, we would probably inflict upon the army thus cut in 
two one of those disasters which settle the fate of a campaign. 

This weak point, it was supposed, had been found near the 
centre of the lines of Warwick Creek, at a place called Lee's 
Mill. The bottom here was firm, the water waist deep. In 
front of the hostile w^orks was a kind of open plateau, upon 
which a strong artillery force might be brought up to shatter 
them. On the 16th of April, an attempt was made at this 
point. Eighteen field-pieces opened fire at 500 yards on the 
confederate batteries, and silenced them, and the creek was 
then passed by some Vermont companies. 

They advanced gallantly, carried a rifle-pit, but their am- 
munition had been wetted in passing the stream ; they were 
not supported, and retired after losing many of their number. 
The project thus began was, no doubt, found to present un- 
foreseen difficulties, and it was at once abandoned. 

This operation, like that against Gloucester, not being feasi 
ble, we were forced to undertake the siege of the uninvested 
fortifications of Yorktown. 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 43 

The various attempts at feeling our way had unfortunately 
consumed much time, and the siege itself was to consume 
much more, although it was pushed forward with great ener- 
gy. Ten thousand laborers, constantly relieved, were set at 
work on the abattis, through the woods, roads, trenches and 
batteries. It was a curious spectacle. A narrow arm of the 
sea, fringed by a close and vigorous vegetable growth, made 
up of trees of all kinds, living and dead, draped in vines and 
mosses, wound up towards the front of our attack. This had 
been used as our -first parallel. Bridges were thrown over it, 
roads had been opened on the banks among the tulip trees, 
the Judas trees, and the azaleas in full flower. From this 
natural parallel others set out, made by human hands and rap- 
idly approaching the works. The defenders kept up on all 
that they saw or suspected, a tremendous fire. The shells 
whistled from every side among the high trees, tore off the 
branches, scared the horses, but did very little damage. Ko- 
body heeded them. In the evenings when all the squads 
came in in good order, their guns on their backs and their 
picks on their shoulders, the firing increased, as if the enemy 
had marked the hour. We used to go to the front for this 
cannonade, as if it were an entertainment, and when on fine 
spring evenings the troops came in gaily to the sound of mar- 
tial music through the blossoming woods, and when the bal- 
loon which we used for our reconnoissances was floating in the 
air, one easily believed himself to be enjoying a festival, and 
was glad for a moment to forget the miseries of the war. 

All this time the siege went on, A powerful artillery force 
had been brought up, not without difficulty. Rifled guns of 
100 and even of 200 pounds calibre, 13-inch mortars, were 
got ready to batter the works. Fourteen batteries had been 
built, armed and provisioned. If we had not yet opened a 
fire it was because we meant it to be general from all sides, 
and wo were only waiting to get into a complete state of pre- 



t-l THE ARMY OB^ THE POTOMAC. 

paration. It was impossible, liowever, to resist the desire we 
had of trying onr 200-ponnders. These enormous guns were 
worked with inconceivable ease. Four men were able to load 
and point them with no more trouble than our old-fashioned 
24-pounders. At three miles their fire was admirably accu- 
rate. One day one of these huge guns had a sort of duel 
with a somewhat smaller rifled piece mounted on one of the 
bastions of Yorktown. The curious upon our side got upon 
the parapets to watch the effect of every shot, then whilst we 
were discussing our observations the sentinel would warn us 
that the enemy in liis turn was firing ; but the distance was so 
great that between the discharge and the arrival of the ball 
everybody had time enough to step quietly down and get 
under the shelter of the parapet. Nevertheless, such was the 
excellence of the firing that you were sure to see the enorm- 
ous missile pass over the very place where the group of spec 
tators had a moment before been standing. It would then go 
on and strike the ground 50 yards in the rear, its cap would 
explode and it would burst, throwing into the air a cloud of 
earth as high as the jet of the water-works at St. Cloud. 

These new and curious artillery experiences were not the 
only interesting feature of this siege. In 1781 Yorktown had 
been besieged by the combined forces of France and America 
under Washington and Kochambeau, and this operation had 
resulted in the celebrated capitulation which secured the 
independence of the United States. At every step we came 
upon the traces of this first siege. Here in this decrepid 
hovel Lafayette had fixed his head-quarters ; there the French 
trenches began ; there, again, lay the camp of the regiments 
of Bourbon and of Saintonge. In other directions appeared 
the still visible entrenchments of Eochambeau, upon which 
the almost tropical vegetation of the country had reasserted 
it empire. Further on was pointed out to us the house inhab- 
ited by the two commanders. Behind these same fortifica- 



THE AKMY OF THE POTOMAC. 45 

tious of Y jrktown, CornwiiUis and his Eiiglislimeii Iiad so long 
withstood the assault of the allied armies. Upon yonder 
ramparts the blood of our soldiers had sealed an alliance un- 
broken down to our own times ; an alliance to which the 
United States once owed their prosperity and their greatness. 
Not to speak of the emotion with which I found myself in 
this distant spot surrounded by recollections of national glory ; 
not to speak of the interest with which I examined the traces 
of scenes of war, some of the actors in which I had myself 
been permitted to see, I could not but ask myself if by a strange 
caprice of destiny these same ramparts might not behold the 
undoing of the work of 1781, and if from the slow siege of 
Yorktown, both tlie ruin of the great Republic and the rup- 
ture of the Franco-American alliance might not be fated to 
come forth. The destiny of the Union was in the hand of the 
God of Battles. No one could foresee his decrees ; but the 
Franco-American alliance, that alliance which had so well 
served all generous ideas, was more plainly dependent upon 
human will. Doubtless the strife before Yorktown was a civil 
war, and although the federals were fighting for the most just 
of all possible causes, nothing absolutely obliged France to 
send her soldiers to aid them. But the sword of France 
makes itself felt afar as well as nearer home, and the Ameri- 
cans of the North could have wished to see their ancient 
allies throw their influence in favor of the side on which were 
arrayed justice and liberty. 

It was plain that with the powerful means which we were 
using the fall of Yorktown was purely a question of time. 
Crushed under the weight of the fire about to be opened upon 
them, without casemates to shelter their troops, with no other 
defences than earthworks and palisades, the rebels had no 
chance of prolonged resistance. Everything was ready for the 
decisive blow. Not only was a terrible bombardment to be 
directed against the city : not only were the choicest troops 



46 THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

selected for the grand assault which was to follow the bom- 
bardment, but the steam transports M^aited only for the signal 
to pass up into the York river as soon as the place should fall, 
and land the forces of Franklin high up on the line of the 
confederate retreat. A part of the forces were actually kept 
on board of the transports. In a few hours they would have 
passed over the distance which it would have taken the enemy 
two days to traverse. Driven by storm from Yoi-ktown, fol- 
lowed up step for step, intercepted on their road by fresh 
troops, the army of the South would have been in a very criti- 
cal position, and the Federals would have found what they so 
greatly needed, a brilliant military success. 

This they needed, not only to escape the serious evils with 
which they were threatened by a prolongation of the cam- 
paign ; the political was perhaps more urgent than the military 
necessity. A victory and a decisive victory alone, could bring 
on the re-establishment of the Union, that object of the ardeni 
pursuit of all American patriots who set the greatness and the 
prosperity of their country above the passions of parties and 
of sects. Bull Run, by humbling one of the adversaries, had 
for a time shut the door upon all hopes of reconciliation. As 
soon as the legal government of the country should have re- 
covered its ground, and proved its strength, it would again 
become possible to negotiate and to establish, by a common 
agreement, the fraternal bonds of the Union. To secure this, 
it was necessary to lose no time. The minds of men were em- 
bittering on either side ; interests, individual ambitions, foreign 
intrigues were daily exerting a more active interposition be- 
tween the two camps, and every delay must make the work 
of reconciliation more difficult. A great success of the 
federal army before Yorktown was then of vital importance 
to the Government at Washington. Unfortunately, the con- 
federate leaders and generals saw and felt this also ; and like 
skillful men they t' ok the best way of preventing it. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 47 

In the night of the 8d and dth of May, Yorktown and 
the lines of Warwick river were evacuated. This evacua- 
tion must have been commenced several days before, but it 
had been managed with great secresy and great skill. On 
the 3d, the fire of the hostile batteries had greatly increased 
in intensity. The shells from the rifled guns flew in all direc- 
tions with a length of range which had not before been sus- 
pected. The accuracy of theip fire* forced us to abandon all 
the signal posts we had established in the tops of the tallest 
trees. The balloon itself, whenever it rose in the air, was sa- 
luted with an iron hail of missiles which were, however, per- 
fectly harmless. The object of all this was to mask the 
retreat, and it was perfectly successful. 

On 'the 4:th, at daybreak, the men in the rifle-pits of the 
advance saw no signs of the foe before them. A few of 
them ventured cautiously up to the very lines of the enemy. 
All was as silent as death. Soon suspicion grew into cer- 
tainty ; it was flashed upon the head-quarters by all tlie 
telegraphic lines which connected them with the difi'er- 
ent corps of the army. The confederates had vanished, 
and with them all chances of a brilliant victory. The impos- 
sibility of any naval cooperation, and the fatal measures by 
which the Army of the Potomac lost the corps of McDowell, 
had combined with the firmness of the enemy to prevent us 
from taking Yorktown by storm. "We had next spent a whole 
month in constructing gigantic works now become useless, 
and now, after all this, the confederates fell back, satisfied 
with gaining time to prepare foi* the defence of Richmond, 
and henceforth relying on the season of heats and sickness for 
aid against the federal army encamped among the marshes of 

* Note. — 1 am not sure whether I ought to attribute to tliis accuracy an cxtiaordi- 
naiy fact which occurred during the siege. Some topographical engineers were 
bu.sy estimating a relief. They were perceived, and a single .«hot was fired at 
thera. The sliell, fired from an immense distance, burst upon tlie circumferentor 
and killed the officer and his a.ssistant. 



48 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

Virginia. The federals, whose number was constantly lessen- 
ing, saw before them the perspective of a campaign Avhich 
threatened to become more and more laborious, diminishino- 
daily as its perils increased the chances of an amicable ad- 
justment. Here was matter enough for serious and even for 
melancholy reflection : but in war moments are precious, and 
it is weakness to lose them in lamentations. It was probable 
that the enemy was at no great distance. He could not yet 
have gained any considerable start, and by throwing ourselves 
rapidly upon his track we might at least come up with his rear 
guard, fling it into disorder, and make some prisoners. 

A few hours after the news was received of the evacuation, 
the whole army was in motion. Stoneman's cavalry first 
crossed the intrenchments. As they passed on, several infer- 
nal machines, cowardly instruments of destruction, burst 
under the horses' feet and killed several men. 

We had only time to cast a single glance upon the formid- 
able works thrown up by the enemj^, upon which he had 
abandoned 72 pieces of artillery ; then passing swiftly through 
his deserted camps and burning magazines, amid whicli the 
sound of sudden explosions was heard from time to time, we 
took the road to Williamsburg, a small city situated upon a 
point at which the Virginian peninsula, shut closely in be- 
tween two arms of the sea, off'ers a strong and defensible posi- 
tion. It was upon this isthmus that we expected to come up 
with the rear guard of the enemy. 

Stoneman marched rapidly upon Williamsburg with all the 
cavahy and four batteries -of horse artillery. The infantry 
followed as fast as the few and narrow roads would ])ennit. 
There were really only two of these roads — one direct from 
Yorktown, the other coming from the left of the federal posi- 
tions. The latter traversed Warwick river at Lee's Mill, on 
a bridge which it took three hours to rebuild. When Smith's 
division, which was the first to cross, had advanced a shoi't 



THE ARMY OF TKI^ POTOMAC. 49 

distance it met a portion of the confederate army, which gave 
way and fell back before it. Smith informed McClellan of 
this, and the General, who thought that Stoneman might ont- 
strip the hostile column and cut it off at the fork of the roads 
before Williamsburg, sent orders to that officer to hasten his 
march. Unfortunately, it was not easy to advance rapidly. 
The roads, and particularly that road taken by the cavalry, 
were narrow and full of frightful morasses from which it was 
difficnlt to extricate the cannon, although the weather had 
been fine and dry for several days. At any other time we 
should have paused to admire the scenery of this lovely region 
covered with virgin forests broken at intervals by a clearing, 
and recalling by its aspect the smiling districts of Devonshire, 
that Provence of England. But now we only looked upon 
these forests as the hiding places of an enemy. The young 
Duke of Chartres, on a scout with forty horsemen, suddenly 
fell upon a confederate brigade. This was the rear guard of 
the column described by Smith. The prince brought back 
some fifteen prisoners and gave his information to Stoneman, 
who hurried his advance to reach tiiis column before it should 
join the body of the hostile forces supposed to be at Williams- 
burir. Soon the fork of the two roads was reached, the one 
leading from Yorktown, by which Stoneman was advancing, 
and the other leading from Lee's Mill, by which the confed- 
erates were retreating. But the moment that the fed- 
eral cavalry came out upon this fork, it was received by an 
artillery fire from numerous field works erected in front of 
Williamsburg. A rapid survey explained the position. As 
we have stated, the Virginian peninsula narrows towards Wil- 
liamsburg. Two creeks or bays, the one opening out of the 
James, the other out of the York, and both terminating in 
marshes, make this neck of land still smaller, and form be- 
tween the marshes a kind of isthmus upon which the roads 
from ].ee's Mill and from Yorktown debouch. To the south 
4 



50 THE AUMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

of tlie isthnins, that is to say in the direction of the approach 
from Yorktown, the country is densely wooded. To the north, 
on the contrary, tliat is to say towards Williamsburg, it is 
open and exhibits large fields of grain behind which the spires 
and towers of the city are visible. Upon this open sj)ace, the 
enemy had erected first, a considerable bastioned work, Fort 
Magrnder, placed upon the roadway opposite the isthmus, 
and then a series of redoubts and rifle-])its fronting every part 
of the marsh over which it Avould have been possible for in- 
fantry to advance. He had then constructed vast abattis in 
such wise as to expose to his artillery and musketry the ap- 
proaches of the marsh and of tlie fork of the roads. It was 
in the midst of these abattis that the federal cavalry debouched 
upon the trot ; and here it was, that they were saluted with a 
shower of shells from Fort Magruder. In the space between 
this fort and the redoubts, the confederate foot and horse were 
drawn up in order of battle. Stoneman, seeing that the enemy 
covered the fork of the roads, and perceiving that it M'ould be 
impossible for him to maintain his ground before them, nnder- 
took to dislodge them by a vigorous blow. He threw forward 
all his horse artillery, which took up its positions brilliantly in 
front of the abattis, and replied to the fire of the redoubts ; 
and he then ordered liis cavalry to charge. The sixth federal 
cavaby dashed forward gallantly to meet the cavalry of the 
confederates, passed directly under the cross-fire of the redoubts, 
and rode into one of those fights Avith the cold steel which liave 
become so rare in these days. Nevertheless, this was all so 
much valor thrown away. The enemy did not disturb himself; 
lie had the advantages of number and position. To carry these 
works with cavalry was impossible. Men and particularly 
horses, began to fall. " I have lost thirty-one men," said Major 
Williams, who had led the charge of the sixth, gracefully sal- 
uting General Stoneman with his sabre, with that air of deter- 
mination which says, " we will go at it again, but it's of no use." 



THE ARMY OF THE rOTOMAC. 51 

Stoneman then ordered the retreat. We repassed the abattis, 
and fallhig Ijack to a clearing about half a mile distant, there 
awaited the arrival of the infantry to renew the engagement. 
Unluckily, in traversing the marsh, a gun of the horse-artil- 
lery got buried in the mud and could not be extricated. In 
vain were the teams doubled. The enemy concentrated his 
fire of shells on that point and killed all the horses. The gun 
had to be left. It was the first whicli the army had lost, and 
the men were inconsolable. In the evening we renewed our 
efforts to recover it, but the abattis were filled with hostile 
sharpshooters who made it impossible to approach. The sun 
was going down. The confederate columns coming from Lee's 
Mill, escaped and took shelter behind the entrenchments of 
Williamsburg. As to the federal infantry, it came up very 
late. The roads over which it passed had been tremendously 
obstructed. At nightfall General Sumner, who had assumed 
command, wished to make an attempt to carry the works. 
Unfortunately it was completely dark before the troops de- 
bouched from the woods and the marshes, and everything had 
to be put off to the next day. Upon this supervened one of 
those vexatious mishaps which are too common in war, and 
of which this anny did not escape its full share during this 
trying campaign. The I'ain began to fall in torrents and 
poured down incessantly for thirty consecutive hours. The 
country became one vast lake, the roads were channels of 
liquid mud. The troops dismally bivouacked for the night 
where they stood. 

'Next day the battle began again, but, of course, in circum- 
stances unfavorable to the federals. The two roads leading to 
Williamsburg were crowded with troops. Upon that to the left 
from Lee's Mill, were the divisions of Hooker and Kearney be- 
longing to Heintzel man's corps — but they were separated from 
each other by an enormous multitude of wagons loaded down 
with baggage, and for the most part, fast in the mud. Upon 



52 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

that to the right two other divisions were moving forward 
witli still greater difficulty. Such was the condition of the 
ground that the cannon sank over tlie axle into the mud. This 
inedley of men and baggage thrown pellmell into narrow and 
flooded roads had fallen into considerable disorder. In the 
United States there is no such thing as a corps of the General 
Staff. The American system of " ever}'" man for himself," 
individually applied by the officers and soldiers of each corps 
to one another, is also applied by the corps themselves to 
their reciprocal relations. There is no special branch of the 
service whose duty it is to regulate, centralize and direct the 
movements of the army. In such a case as this of which we 
are speaking, we should have seen the General Staff Officers 
of a French army taking care that notliing should impede the 
advance of the troops, stopping a file of wagons here and 
ordering it out of the road to clear the way, sending on a de- 
tail of men there to repair the roadway or to draw a cannon 
out of the mire, in order to conmiunicate to every corps com- 
mander the orders of the General-in-Chief 

Here nothing of the sort is done. Tlie functions of the 
adjutant-general are limited to the transmission of the orders 
of tlie genera]. He has nothing to do with seeing that they 
are executed. The general has no one to bear his orders but 
aides-de-camp who have the best intentions in the world, and 
are excellent at repeating mechanically a verbal order, but to 
whom nobody pays much attention if they undertake to exercise 
any initiative whatever. Down to the present moment although 
this want of a General Staff had been often felt, its consequences 
had not been serious. We had the telegraph, which followed 
the army everywhere and kept up communications between 
the different corps ; the generals could converse together and 
inform each other of anything that it was impuitant to know. 
But once on the march this resource was lost to us, and so 
farewell to our communications ! 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 63 

The want of a General SUiif was not less severely felt in 
obtaining and transmitting the information necessary at the 
moment of an impending action. No one knew the country ; 
the maps were so defective that they were useless. Little was 
known about the fortified battle-field on which the army was 
about to be engaged. Yet this battle-field had been seen and re- 
connoitred the day before by the troops which had taken part 
inStoneman's skirmish. Enough was surely known of it for us 
to combine a plan of attack and assign to every commander 
his own part in the work. No, this was not so. Every one 
kept his observations to himself, not from illwill, but because it 
was nobody's special duty to do this general work. It was a 
defect in the organization, and with the best elements in the 
world an army which is not organized cannot expect great 
success. It is fortunate if it escape great disaster. 

Thanks to this constitutional defect of the federal armies, 
Hooker's division which led the column on the left hand road 
and had received, the day before, a general order to march 
npon Williamsburg, came out on the morning of the 5th 
upon the scene of Stoneman's cavalry fight without the least 
knowledge of what it was to meet there. Eeceived as soon 
as it appeared with a steady fire from the hostile works, it de- 
ployed resolutely in the abattis and went into action. But it 
came up little by little and alone, whilst the defence was 
carried on by from 15 to 20,000 men strongly entrenched. 
The odds were too great. 

Hooker, who is an admirable soldier, held his own for some 
time, but he had to give way and fall back, leaving in the 
woods and in these terrible abattis some two thousand of his 
men killed and wounded, with several of his ffuns which he 
could not bring ofi". The enemy followed him as lie fell back. 
The division of General Kearney having passed the crowded 
road, and marching upon the guns at the pas de course, re- 
established the battle. The fisrht had now rolled from the 



■64 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

edges of tlic plain into tlie forest, and it was sLarp, for the 
enemy was strongly reinforced. The federals fought not less 
firmly, encouraged by their chiefs, Hooker, Heintzelman, and 
Kearney. Kearney in especial, who lost an arm in Mexico, 
and fought with the French at the Muzaia and at Solferino, had 
displayed the finest courage. All his aids had fallen around 
him, and left alone he had electrified his men by his intrepid- 
ity. During all this time the part of the army massed on the 
road to the right remained passive. A single division only 
liad come up, and the generals in command could not resolve 
to throw it into the engagement without seeing its supports. 
These supports were delayed by the swollen streams, the en- 
cumbered roads, the shattered wagons sticking in the mud. 

But all the while the sound of Hookei''s musketry was in 
our ears. His division was cut up and falling back. His guns 
had been heard at first in front, then on one side, and they were 
receding still. The balls and tlie shells began to whistle and 
shatter the trees over the fresh division as it stood immova- 
ble and expectant. 

It was now three o'clock, and the generals resolved to act. 
One division passed through the woods to flank the regiments 
which Avere driving Hooker, while to the extreme right a 
brigade passed the creek on an old mill bridge, which the 
enemy had failed to secure, and debouched upon the flank of 
the Williamsburg works. The confederates did not expect 
this attack, which, if successful, must sweep everything be- 
fore it. They dispatched two brigades, which advanced 
resolutely through the corn fields to drive back the federals. 
The latter coolly allowed their foes to come up, and received 
thom with a tremendous fire of artillery. Th( confederates 
unshaken, pushed on within thirty yards of the cannon's 
mouth, shouting, " Bull Kun ! Bull Kun ! " as the Swiss used 
to shout, " Griinson ! Granson ! " There, however, they wav- 
ered, and the federal General Hancock, seizing the moment, 



THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. " 55 

cried to his soldiers, as lie waved his cap, " Now, goutlomen, 
the bayonet ! " and charged with his brigade. The enemy 
could not withstand the shock, broke and fled, strewing the 
field with his dead. At this very moment General McClellan, 
who had been detained at Yorktown, appeared on the field. 
It was dusk, the night was coming on, the rain still falling in 
torrents. On three sides of the plateau on which the general 
was, the cannon and the musketry were rattling uninterrupt- 
edly. The success of Hancock had been decisive, and the 
reserves brought up by the General-in-Chief, charging upon 
the field settled the afl'air. Then it was that I saw General 
McClellan, passing in front of the Sixth cavalry, give his hand 
to Major Williams with a few words on his brilliant charge of 
the day before. The regiment did not hear Mdiat he said, but 
it knew what he meant, and from every heart went up one 
of those masculine, terrible shouts, which are oul}' to be heard 
on the field of battle. These shouts, taken up along the whole 
line, struck terror to the enemy. We saw them come upon 
the parapets and look out in silence and motionless upon the 
scene. Then the firing died away and night fell on the com- 
bat which in America is called '' the battle of Williamsburg. 



IV. 

Jfr0m Millhimsbur^ tor Jfit'ir #alis. 

The next day dawned clear and cloudless. The atmosphere 
had that purity which in warm countries succeeds a storm ; 
the woods breathed all the freshness of a fair spring j.aorning. 
All around us lay a smiling landscape, decked with splendid 
flowers new to European eyes ; but all this only deepened the 
mournful contrast of the battle field, strewn with the dead and 
dying, with wrecks and ruin. The confederates had evacuated 
their works during the night. We soon entered them and 



56 ' THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

watched the blue lines of the federal infantry as they march- 
ed with banners flying into the town of Williamsburg to 
the sound of expl >ding magazines and caissons. Shortly after 
the General's staf came in by a broad fine street, bordered with 
acacias. All the shops were shnt, but the inhabitants for the 
most part were to be seen in their doorways and windows, 
looking on lis with a sombre, anxious air. The negroes alone 
were smiling. Many of them put on the most grotesquely 
victorious airs, or decamped in the direction of Fortress Mon- 
roe, that is to say, of freedom, carrying their wives and 
children witli them in small carts. From all the public 
buildings, churches, colleges and the like waved the yellow 
flag. They were crowded with the wounded left there by the 
enemy. At the end of a broad street, we debouched upon a 
handsome square, ornamented with a marble statue of Lord 
Botetourt, once governor of Virginia, and surrounded by the 
buildings of a celebrated college founded by the English 
Government when Virginia was a pet colony. The wounded 
were lying upon the very steps of the college porticoes. 

General McClellan's first thought was for the relief of all 
this suffering. He dispatched a flag of truce to the confeder- 
ate rear-guard, to request them to send in surgeons to look 
after their wounded, promising them perfect freedom of 
action. A number of these medical officers soon arrived, 
dressed in the dull-gray confederate uniform with the green 
collar, which gave them the appearance of Austrian Chas- 
seurs. 

This duty done, the next thing was to station sentinels for 
the maintenance of exact discipline. Tliis precaution was 
superfluous, for if the obedience of the federal soldiers to their 
officers is not what it should be, for the good of the service, 
I venture to believe that no army has ever shown more res- 
pect fDr non-combatants and private property. During the 
whol r time of my presence with the Army of the Potomac, 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 57 

the only instance of disorder wliicli came to my knowledge, 
<vas the pillage of a garret filled "with the finest Virginia 
tobacco, which was discovered in an abandoned barn. Let 
me add that the circumstances made this strict observance of 
discipline particularly meritorious. Tlie troops encamped 
around Williamsburg after the battle which we have just des- 
cribed were for a short time in want of provisions in conse- 
quence of the impracticable state of the roads, and they 
endured with resignation the hostile attitude of the inhab- 
itants who met their offers to pay in specie for food with an 
unanimous refusal. After the first moment of fear had 
passed, and it was evident that there was no ground for alarm, 
the ladies of the town might have been seen ostentatiously 
carrying to the wounded of their own party the refreshments 
which could not be procured for the wounded federals ; and 
whenever, followed by their negro servants carrying well 
filled baskets, they met a federal soldier on the sidewalk, 
they made a point of gathering up their dresses in haste as if 
to avoid the contact of some unclean animal. The victors only 
smiled at these childish and ill-bred demonstrations. Other 
troops in their place might have been less patient. 

The General fixed his head-quarters in the house which the 
confederate General Johnston had occupied the day before, 
for it was no longer with Magruder that we were dealing. 
Johnston is considered by friends and foes, and especially by 
his old comrades of the regular army, as a warrior of the first 
rank. He is reputed to unite great personal courage with an 
iron will, and a remarkable capacity for taking in a whole 
battle field at a glance. With the fine intellect of Jefferson 
Davis to conceive, his omnipotence to prepare, and Johnston 
to execute their plans, the confederates were in good hands, as 
we very plainly saw. By holding his jDOsition for two days 
before Williamsburg, Johnston had given time for his trains 
and f •: the major part of his troops to move quietly off 



58 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

tlirougli the narrow country roads ; and notwithstanding tlie 
rain which had reduced these roads to a deplorable condition, 
he reached the upper York river two dajs after the battle of 
Williamsburg, in time to engage the troops of Franklin, then 
just disembarked, and so complete the protection of his 
retreat. We were next to meet him before Eichmond. 

The federal army passed three days at Williamsburg look- 
ing up the wounded who were scattered through the woods, 
and burying the dead. The wounded were sent off by water 
to the North on board of those large steamboats which are so 
famous for their comfort and their elegance. Thanks to the 
creeks which cut up the whole country, these boats, came up 
and took the wounded almost from the battle held. As to the 
dead they were buried where they lay. On the side of the 
enemy they were numerous ; we counted sixty-three in a 
single rifle-pit. General McClellau sent a few squadrons in 
pursuit of the enemy, and these horsemen had several pas- 
sages at arms with the rear guard. ^The first day many pris- 
oners were taken and eight cannon ; but after the second day 
the retreat became orderly and the pursuit almost purposeless. 
Moreover, if the enemy lost some of his guns, he carried off 
an almost equal number, captured from Hooker's division, 
which were used as trophies to kindle a zeal already some- 
what cooled by his long and continued retreats. The mass of 
the federal troops was detained by the necessity of waiting 
tor provisions from Yorktown, the arrival of which was re- 
tarded by the state of the roads. They came at last, and as 
the fine weather dried the roads up very fast, a two days' 
march brought us up with the corps which had disembarked 
and established a depot at the head of York river. The whole 
army was collected around tliis point and then resumed its 
march to Richmond along the Pamunkey, a navigable afilu- 
ent of the York, Nothing could be more picturesque than 
this military march along the banks of a fine stream thi'ough 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 59 



a magnificent country arrayed in all the wealth cf spring- 
vegetation. Tlie winding course of tlie Paniunkey tlirougli a 
valley in which meadows of the brightest green alternated 
with wooded hills, ottered a perpetual scene of enchantment 
to our eyes. Flowers bloomed everywhere, especially on the 
river banks, which abounded in magnolias, Virginia jessa- 
mines, azaleas and blue lupines. Humming-birds, snakes, and 
strange birds of every hue, sported in the branches and about 
the trunks of the trees. Occasionally we passed a stately 
habitation which recalled the old mansions of rural France, 
with its large windows in the roof; around it a handsome 
ffarden, and behind it the slave-cabins. 

As the army was descried in the distance, the inhabitants 
would hang out a white flag. One of the provost marshal's 
horsemen would dismount at the door, and, reassured by his 
presence, the ladies in their long muslin dresses, surrounded 
by a troop of little negresses with frizzled hair and bare legs, 
would come out upon the verandah and watch the passage of 
the troops. They were often accompanied by old men, with 
strongly marked faces, long, white locks, and broad brimmed 
liats — never by young men. All the men capable of bearing 
arms had been carried off, willy-nilly, by the Government, to 
join in the general defence. If an officer dismounted and 
made his bow to the ladies, he was civilly received. The 
classic cup of cold water was offered to him in a gourd fixed 
on the end of a stick, and a melancholy sort of conversation 
followed. Men and women were eager for the news. They 
knew nothing of what was happening; the censorship of the 
confederate newspapers being complete, and the little news 
the}' did publish not being often believed. Tiieu the talk 
turned upon the war. The ladies naturally expressed their 
hopes for the success of the side on which their brothers were 
enlisted ; but they longed, above all things, for the end of the 
war and of the incalculable evils it had brought upon the 



60 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

land. "Alas!" we would reply: "who is to blame? "Who 
kindled this unhappy strife ? Who fired the first gun without 
a reason or a motive?" They would make no answer, but 
their glances would wander mechanically over the black heads 
crowded in the doors of the negro huts. We never spoke of 
slavery in these interviews ; to utter the word " slave " would 
have sufficed to call up into the most amiable eyes, an expres- 
sion of anxiety and of hatred. 

At other times we would find the white owners fled, and 
nobody left but the negroes, with whom we spoke of other 
matters. I remember a mulatto woman who called our atten- 
tion with an air of pride to her son, a fine, bright yellow child 
of some four years, with these significant words: "He is the 
son of a white man ; he is worth 400 dollars. I began at 
fifteen, and I am nineteen now. I have four already." 

So from point to point we moved along the river. The gun- 
boats went first and explored the country before us ; then 
came the topographical officers, moving through the woods 
with an escort of cavalry, reconnoitering the country, and 
sketching by the eye and the compass provisional maps, 
which were photographed at head-quarters for the use of the 
Generals. The next day, with the help of these maps, the ar- 
my would get into motion, mingled in masses with its im- 
mense team of wagons. About one-fourth of each regiment 
was occupied in escorting the materiel of the corps, piled up, 
provisions, ammunition, tents and furniture on wagons, at the 
rate of ten to a battalion. But for the absence of women, we 
might have been taken for an armed emigration, rather than 
for soldiers on the march. 

Tlie fighting force marched by brigades, followed by their 
baggage, and these long files of wagons each drawn by foui" 
horses or six mules, and driven by a single postilion, made 
the army stretch upon these narrow forest paths over an im- 
mense space of country. Hence followed delays equally im- 



THE ABMY OF THE POTOMAC. 61 

men»e ; for long marches could not have been made withvjut 
leaving the rear of the columns broken and scattered in the 
woods by night. Six miles was the extreme limit of our day's 
march. Sometimes we may have done better ; detached corps 
relieved of all impediments made some long day's marches, but 
these were exceptions. The troops were in excellent condition. 
The men were vigorous, strong and intelligent in appearance. 
The uniform of the whole army was the same ; light blue 
trousers, commonly tucked into the boots, and a blouse or 
jacket or short tunic of dark blue. Some red mark on the 
dress distinguished the artillery, a touch of yellow the cav- 
alry. The common head-dress was the kepi, but many wore 
a soft black felt hat, with gilded ornaments. The officers, 
clad like the soldiers, were distinguished by small gilt straps 
on the shoulder, and a purplish sash. Nothing can be more 
simple, more comfortable, or more soldier-like than this uni- 
form when it is properly worn. In the evening, when we 
came to a halt, the camps were formed with much order and 
regularity. The shelter-tents of the soldiers were put up in 
the twinkling of an eye. The staffs planted theirs, which were 
larger and more commodious. The head-quarters was fixed 
in some central position, with the tent of the General-in-Chief 
in the middle, and two parallel ranges of tents on either side. 
The cavalry officers brought in their reports of their recon- 
noissances and of their constant skirmishes with the enemy. 
The telegraphers brought on their wires, fastened as usual upon 
posts, or enveloped in gutta percha and unrolled along the 
ground from a rapidly driven wagon, which was followed by 
the operators on horseback with the aj)paratus slung from 
their shoulders. All the branches of the service were organ- 
ized, and the printing office worked as regularly as it could 
have done at Washington. 

Let us do justice to the Americans. They understand this 
camp-life better than anybody else. Their locomotive habits, 



62 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

the iamiliarity of many of them with the patriarchal specta- 
cle of emigrant columns moving across the Western prairies, 
the nomadic life which their officers have led among the 
Indian tribes, all these things fit them beyond any othcj' sol- 
diers in the world for this kind of life. This encampment of a 
hundred thousand men, the establishment of this city of tents, 
was a really curious sight, it recalled the descriptions of the 
Bible : but there was little that was biblical in the forest of 
transport ships, most of them steamers, which came up by 
water under a cloud of smoke as soon as the camp was fixed, 
and blowing oif steam with a loud noise, hauled in to tlie banks 
and improvised wharves, which soon became scenes of extra- 
ordinary activity. Thousands of wagons hastened in from 
every side by roads which the axe had opened for them in a 
few minutes, and returned again loaded with all the com- 
modities required by an army : biscuit, salted meat, coffee, 
sugar, barley, hay, corn. Then the sick were embarked, and 
alas ! the number of these constantly increased, for the 
season was at once rainy and intensely hot, and these lovely 
meadows of the Pamunkey gave birth to deadly fever. Then 
night would come on disturbed only by the tedious cry of the 
mocking-bird. With the next morning the flotilla and the 
army would resume their marcli, leaving behind them nature 
silent, but deflowered by their passage. 

On May the 16th we reached White House, a fine building 
once the property of Washington, and now of his descendants, 
the Lee family. The head of this family, General Lee, was 
one of the chief officers of the confederate army ; one of his 
nephews was in the federal ranks. General McClellan, 
always careful to insist upon respect for private property sta- 
tioned sentinels around the residence of the hostile general, 
forbade any one to enter it, and would not enter it himself. 
He planted his tent in a neighboring meadow. This respect 
for Southern property has been made a reproach to the Gene- 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 63 

ral in Congress ; the opinion of the army did not take this 
direction ; it endorsed the delicate feeling of its leader. This 
feeling was pnshed so far that when a general's servants found 
one day in an abandoned house a basket of champaigne, the 
General sent it back again conspicuously the next by an aid- 
de-camp. We may smile at this puritanical austerity to which 
we are not accustomed in Europe. For my own part I ad- 
mit that I always admired it. 

At White House the Pamunkey ceased to be navigable. 
The York river railroad, which unites Richmond with this 
river, crosses it at this point by a bridge which the enemy had 
destroyed, and then runs in almost a straight line to the Vir- 
ginian capital. This road had been scarcely injured. Having 
neither embankments nor viaducts it was not easy to destroy 
it. A few rails only had been removed, and were soon re- 
placed ; all the rolling stock had been run off, but the federal 
army had locomotives and cars on board of its transports. 
Tlie whole flotilla was unloaded at White House, where a vast 
depot was established under the protection of the gunboats, 
and all the bustle of a seaport soon became visible. The army 
recommenced its march to Richmond, following the line of 
the railway, which was to be the vital artery of its operations. 

During all this time what were the confederates doing? 
We have seen Johnston successfully delivering battle against 
the federal advance, on the 5th of May, at Williamsburg, 
and against Franklin's corps on the 7th, at the head of York 
river, in order to gain time for the bulk of his army to fall 
back undisturbed upon Richmond. Cavalry reconnoissances 
pushed in all directions had demonstrated the fact that almost 
the whole hostile army had recrossed the Chickahominy. 
Everything led us to believe that we should not meet it again 
excepting under the walls of Richmond ; at the same time 
everything indicated that the confederates were concentrating 
in their capital for a desperate resistance. 



64 THE ARMY OF THE TOTOMAC. 

We had captured prisoners belonging to a corps wliicli 
liad, up to this time, been stationed opposite Burnside in 
ISTorth Carolina ; it was, therefore, plain that this corps had 
joined the army of Johnston. We soon learned the evacua- 
tion of Norfolk and the occupation of that city by General 
Wool. It was evident that Davis could only have made 
up his mind to this sacrifice because he wished to draw 
into Richmond Huger and the 18,000 men who had up to 
this time held the great arsenal of Yirginia. Finally the 
confederate leader had ordered a levy en masse of all men 
able to bear arms. They had been sent into camps of in- 
struction, whence they would be incorporated with the old 
regiments, the effective force of which would thus be doubled. 
The result of all this threatened the army of the Potomac in 
its only superiority, that of numbers. Unhappily, too, while 
the enemy was concentrating and strengthening his forces, 
ours were melting away. We have already seen how at 
Alexandria a division was detached and sent to Fremont. Be- 
fore Yorktown we had lost two other divisions under Mc- 
Dowell. We had since left garrisons in Yorktown, Glouces- 
ter and Williamsburg. We had lost men under fire and by 
disease, as well as by straggling. Nothing came to fill up 
the gaps. When an American regiment marches to the war 
it goes as a whole, and leaves behind it no depots of recruits 
to restore its ranks as they are wasted away. 

It will be easily seen how much reason we had to be anx- 
ious about this diminution of the army, while we knew that 
the confederates were steadily swelling their force, and while 
by plunging more deeply into the heart of the enemy's coun- 
try we were daily moving further from our own base of opera- 
tions, and losing at once the moral and material aid of the na- 
vy, the cooperation of which had hitherto proved so powerful 
and so useful. 

I am aware that the evacuation of Norfolk was followed by 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 



65 



an important event of good augury to the federal cause. The 
Merrunac, which was no longer commanded by the brav^ 
Buchanan, and which had now no place of refuge, was burn- 
ed by her new captain. Hencefortli James river was opened 
to the federals, but nnfortunately it was opened just too late. 
Tlie iron-clad gunboats Galena, Naugatnck and Monitor, ran 
np to within seven miles of Richmond : there they found the 
river barred by a stockade which could not be forced, and its 
lofty banks defended by a battery of heavy guns, which could 
not be silenced. The great gun of the Naugatuck burst : the 
Monitor could not give her cannon elevation enough to reach 
the batteries of " Fort Darling." As to the Galena, her cuirass, 
three inches and a half thick, failed to protect her against 
conical 100-pounders, and she was forced to retire, after a he- 
roic fight, with a large number of her crew placed hors du 
comlaL A land attack upon the forts was found to be neces- 
sary, if the passage was to be forced ; but in the face of the 
confederates, massed at a short distance before Richmond, 
such an operation could only have been attempted by the 
whole army. To accomplish it, the moment the news of the 
destruction of the Merrimac reached General McClellan, he 
should have abandoned the plan of campaign which he had 
begun to execute, and sought the James river by a rap- 
id oblique march, in order to combine his operations with 
those of the navy upon that river. To-day, with the added 
experience of the events which actually occurred, I am inclin- 
ed to think this would have been a wiser course to pursue. 
Of course, the passage from the Pamunkey to the James 
would have been dangerous; the passage of the lower Chick- 
ahominy, or cf the Lower James, according as it nright have 
been determined upon to operate up the right or up the^ left 
bank of the latter river, would have been a ditficult and delicate 
Jiing to attempt, with the grand army of the confederates 
hanging upon the flank of the federals. Yet this risk would 
5 



66 . THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

/invc been better tlian tlie dismal position in wliicli tlie army 
really tbnnd itself for a month in the marshes of tlie Cliicka- 
hominy. But who conld at that time have foreseen, that at 
tlie decisive moment of the campaign, inundations unexam- 
pled at tliat season of the year would thwart the eli'orts and 
paralyze the movements of the Potomac army, as they did on 
the day of the battle of Fair Oaks ? Or who, again, could fore- 
see that the 80,000 men. assembled before Washington, would 
<Jo nothing, and less than nothing, to aid the army in overcom- 
ing the concentration of forces it was called upon to encounter? 
We continued; then, our forward movement, and notwith- 
standing the almost constant rains, we were not long reaching 
the banks of the Chickahominy, at a place called Bottom 
Bridge, ten )nile3 from Richmond, where the York river rail- 
road, which vre had been following from White House, crosses 
the river on a bridge temporarily destroyed by the enemy. 
Here we were fairly at the gates of Richmond. Down to 
this time the campaign, if it had not been brilliant, had at 
least been fertile in results. Yorktown, one of the most im- 
portant military positions of the enemy, had fallen. Norfolk, 
the magnificent ai'senal from which the South drew the great- 
er part of its military stores had been abandoned, and the ne- 
cessity of abandoning it had brought on the destruction of 
the formidable Merrimac. Finally, General McClellan had 
succeeded in pitching his camp without accident in front of 
the capital of the Seceded States, and of their main army. 
The confederates could fall back no further, without losing all 
their prestige in the eyes of their partisans, and of the whole 
world. They Avere thus driven to accept a decisive battle up- 
on this point. In our actual circumstances, it was no slight 
merit to have forced an adversary back upon such a necessity. 
I know that a battle ought to have been won at this point, 
and that it was not won. But the whole responsibility of this 
matter by no means rests upon the General or upon his army. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 67 

Who were the men, who by driving liim into an untimely 
campaign, had revealeo to the enemy operations not yet ripe 
tor execution ? Was McClelhiu responsible for tliat Avant cf 
unity in the ends and in the action of the government which 
liad trammelled the movements of the army since lie had 
l)een dej^rived of the chief command and supreme directions 
of the forces? Was McClellan responsible for the systematic 
diminution of his forces, which, in the face of the agglomera- 
tion of the forces of the enemy, had successively deprived 
him, since the campaign had opened, of the division of Blen- 
ker and of two-thirds of McDowell's corps, without sending 
him one solitary man to fill up the gaps )nade by sickness and 
by the cannon ? In spite of all these obstacles he had reached 
the walls of Kichmond, but he had no longer the means of 
striking the great blow which prol)ably Avould have ended the 
war. In a hostile country covered with forests, where one 
sees nothing and knows little, what appears a simple I'econ- 
noissance may often prove a serious and general attack. There 
a large force is needed to guard against surprises, and a still 
larger force to secure lines of communicatioii, which cannot 
be broken w^ithout danger. 

Evidently we needed reinforcements. Could we obtain 
them ? Could the federals meet, Avith a powerful concentra- 
tion of troops, that concentration which the enemj'- had 
effected, and to the reality of which the observations of our 
aeronauts, as well as the statements of deserters, daily bore 
witness? This was the first question we had to ask ourselves. 
General Wool from Norfolk, Burnside from North Carolina, 
might send some men, but very few, while around Washing- 
ton more than eighty thousand were collected. Of these 
about one-half were making head against the partisan Jack- 
son in the valley of the Shenandoah. The rest were collected 
under McDowell at Fredericksburg, sixty miles to the north 
of Richmond. They had rebuilt the railway bridge over the 



68 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

Ktippabannock, and in tliree or four days tliej might have 
joined the army of McClelhm. They covered nothing at 
Fredericksburg, and were so notoriously useless to the federal 
cause that in the confederate journals they were spoken of as 
the " fifth wheel of the coach." It was known that McDowell 
desired ardently to give the lie to these railleries by bringing 
at the decisive moment his assistance to the cause of the 
Union. Accordingly McOlellan had no sooner arrived before 
Kichmond than he undertook to discover what he had to hope 
for from this quarter. I^o official advices, either from Wash- 
ington or from Fredericksburg, had informed him of McDow- 
ell's presence at that point, only sixty miles distant, but rumor 
and probability agreed so well in placing him there that the 
General-in-Chief resolved to make an attempt to establish com- 
munication with him. On the niglit of the 26th he sent for- 
Avai'd General Porter's division with a few squadrons of cav- 
alry, in a furious storm, to Hanover Court House, a village 
about twenty miles north of Richmond, where the railway to 
Fredericksburg crosses the Pamunkey. The troops of Porter 
]noved rapidly, and about midday on the 27th came upon the 
hostile division of Branch, at Hanover Court House. This 
they assailed with vigor, dispersed it, and took one of its 
guns. Assailed in their turn by confederate troops who had 
suffered them to pass by the woods in which they lay hidden, 
the federals turned on their new enemies and scattered them 
also. This brilliant affair cost the federals 400 men, and left 
General Porter in possession of a cannon, of 500 prisoners, 
and of two bridges, one on the Fredericksburg and one on 
the Yirginia Central road. The advanced guard of McDow- 
ell was then at Bowling Green, fifteen miles from that of Por- 
ter. It needed only an effort of the will ; the two armies were 
united, and the possession of Richmond certain ! Alas ! this 
effort was not made. I cannot recall those fatal moments 
without a real sinking of the heart. Seated in an orchard in 



1 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 69 

the bivouac of Porter, amid the joyous excitement which fol- 
lows a successful combat, I saw the Fifth Cavalry bring in 
whole companies of confederate prisoners, with arms and bag- 
gage, their officers at Flieir head. But neither the glad confi- 
dence of the federals nor the discouragement of their enemies 
deceived me, and I asked myself how many of these gallant 
young men who surrounded me, relating their exploits of the 
day before, would pay with their lives for the fatal error which 
was on the point of being committed. Not only did not the 
two armies unite, but the order came from Washington to 
burn the bridges which had been seized. This was the clear- 
est way of saying to the Army of the Potomac, and to its chiefs, 
that in no case could they count on the support of the armies 
of Upper Yirginia. 

This unfortunate step had been taken upon hearing of the 
successful dash which the confederate General Jackson was 
then making upon the Upper Potomac. This skillful leader 
ascertaining that the federal forces in that region were broken 
up into a number of small independent corps, under the 
orders of Generals Fremont, Banks, Shields and others, had 
taken advantage of this state of anarchy to give them battle 
one after another. lie had driven Banks across the Potomac 
and had created such confusion that he was supposed to be 
on the point of entering Washington. With more than 
40,000 men to defend that city, with the easily tenable line 
of the Potomac, and the vast entrenched camp which sur- 
rounds the Capital it was not thought to be safe. McDowell 
was summoned in hot haste to join in the pursuit of Jacksoru 
McDowell, as was to have been expected, arrived too late. 
But the bridges which might have connected his operations 
with those of McClellan, had been destroyed. It is j)i'obable 
that in the confusion which reigned at Washington, the order 
to destroy them was sent for the purpose of preventing the con- 
federates from using them to send reinforcements to Jackson. 



70 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

But let us turn from tliis afflicting spectacle ; let us turn 
from Jackson j)laying at fast and loose witli the four Generals 
opposed to him. He had carried his point. His daring 
movement had prevented the junction of McDowell with 
McClellan, at the moment when that junction would have 
been decisive of the campaign. Henceforth the Army of the 
l^otoraac could rely only upon itself. Ko time was to be lost 
before acting, for every day augmented the disproportion 
between the forces of the adversaries, and it was to be feared 
the federals encamped amid the marshes of the Chickahominy 
would suffer severely from the great heats now setting in. 
"We had been for some days face to face. The federal advance 
was but five miles distant from Richmond. Skirmishes were 
of daily occurrence, and with the feeling on both sides a 
general action w^as inevitable. General McClellan waited for 
two things before making the attack. He waited for the roads 
which the rain had swamped to become solid and practicable 
for his artillery, and for the completion of the numerous 
bridges which he was throwing over the Chickahominy. 

The character of the localities, the impossibility of quitting 
the railway by which the army was supplied, and the 
necessity of keeping on his guard against any attempt of the 
enemj' to turn his position, had forced the General to divide 
his troops into two wings on the opposite banks of the river. 
It was consequently most important to be able to mass them 
rapidly, either on the right bank for an offensive movement 
against Richmond, or on the left bank against any attempt to 
turn the position. The latter danger was much to be feared, 
fur the confederates had retained possession of several bridges 
on the upper Chickahominy, which would permit them to 
occupy the excellent positions that are to be found on the left 
bank, just so soon as the northern army should abandon 
these positions. In this way they would have shut us up 
ui)on the right bank, blockaded, starved, and reduced to an 



THE AKJIY OF THE POTOMAC. 71 

extremely critical condition. Uufortimately everything drag- 
ged with us. Tlie roads were long in drying, the bridges 
were long in building. " l^ever have vv' e seen so rainy a sea- 
son," said the oldest inhabitant. "Kever did we see bridges 
•so difficult to build," said the engineers. The abominable 
river laughed at all their efforts. Too narrow for a bridge of 
boats, too deep and too muddy for piers, here a simple brook 
some ten yards wide, flowing betwen two plains of quicksand 
in which the horses sank up to the girths and which offered 
no bearings — there divided into a thousand tiny rivulets 
ypread over a surface of three hundred yards and traversing 
one of those wooded morasses which are peculiar to trop- 
ical countries, changing its level and its bed from day to 
da} , the river in its capricious and uncertain sway annulled 
and undid to-day the labors of yesterday, carried on under a 
burning sun and often under the fire of the enemy. And so 
went by days upon days, precious irrecoverable days ! Per- 
Jiaps, let us frankly say it, the army was not so eager to act 
as it ought to have been. To advance and meet the enemy 
upon his own ground was an adventurous enterprise some- 
what foreign to au American army. In that country 
men affect the slow, circumspecl", metliodical kind of war 
which leaves nothing to chance. This delay, as we have 
alread}^ remarked, is part of the national cluiracter; 
it is, also, to a certain extent, imposed upon the gen- 
erals by the nature of tlieir troops. These troops are very 
brave, but as tve have attempted to show, it follows from the 
weakness of the hierarchical bond among them that one can 
never be sure that they will do exactly what they are ordered 
to do. Individual wills, as capricious as popular majorities, 
phi}^ too great a \)avt among them. The leader has to turn his 
head to see if his men are following him. He is not certain 
that his subordinates are attached to him by the ties of disci- 
pline and duty. Hence, hesitation, and with it conditions uu- 



72 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

favorable to any dashing enterprise. "If we could but be 
attacked and have a defensive battle," 1 often heard it said, 
" the day would be half won." This wish was granted. The 
enemy was the lirst to attack. On the 81st of May he put an 
end to all unccrtaintias and specuhitions as to the best way ot 
getting at hiin by throwing himself boldly, with all his forces, 
upon the army of the Potomac. The bloody conflict which 
raged on that day and the next has received the name of the 
battle of Fair Oaks. 

At the time when this attack was made, the federal army 
occupied a position in the form of a letter Y. The base of 
the V rests upon Bottom Bridge, where the railway crosses 
the Chickahominy. The left arm follo^s^s this railway and 
the Williamsburg road towards Richmond. Here lay the left 
wing, formed of four divisions, echelonned one behind the 
other, between Savage's Station and Fair Oaks, and encamped 
in the woods on either side of the railway. The right arm of 
the V follows the left bank of the river. Here lay tlie right 
Aving, consisting of five divisions and the reserves. To pass 
from one end to the other of these two wings, one must have 
crossed the river at Bottom Bridge, and the distance would 
have been something like 15 miles. As the crow flies, the 
distance, on the contrary, was small, but the Chickahominy 
flowed between the two arms of the V. It was to unite these 
two arms that three or four bridges across the river were com- 
menced, one alone of which was fit for use on May 31st. It 
had been built by General Sumner, about half way between 
Bottom Bridge and the most advanced point of the federal 
lines. It saved that day the whole federal army from destruc- 
tion. The other bridges were ready, but could not be thrown 
across the stream. Tills fact saved the Confederate army. 

The strength of the enemy was thrown against the left 
wing Tiie advance of this wing lay at Fair Oaks, a station 
on tine York river road, and at Seven Pines, a point on the 



THE AKMY OF THE POTOMAC. 73 

"Williamsburg road. Here the federals had thrown up a re- 
doubt ill a clearing, where there were a few houses, and they 
had felled trees to widen the sweep of their guns. The rest 
of the country was one dense wood. The evening before we 
had a terrific storm, with torrents of rain ; the roads were 
frightful. 

Suddenly, about 1 P. M., the weather being grey and dull, 
we heard a very lively fire of musketry. The pickets and the 
advance were violently driven in ; the woods around Fair 
Oaks and Seven Pines were filled with hostile sharpshooters. 
The troops flew to arms and fought desperately; but the forces 
of the enemy constantly increased, and he was not checked 
by his losses, The redoubt at Seven Pines was surrounded, 
and its defenders fell valiantly. Here, among others, Colonel 
Bailey, of the artillery, met a glorious death among his guns. 
The redoubt was carried, and the Northern troops fell into 
some confusion. In vain did Generals Keyes and Naglee 
make a thousand efforts to rally their troops ; ihey were 
wholly disregarded. At this moment they perceived a small 
battalion of French troops, known as the "Gardes Lafayette," 
standing in good order. The Generals rode up to it, put them- 
selves at its head, charged the enemy, and retook a battery. 
The battalion lost a fourth of its numbers in this charge, but 
like genuine Frenchmen, the same all the world over, they 
cried — "They may call us Gardes Lafourchette now, if they 
like," in allusion to an uncomplimentary nickname which had 
been bestowed on them. 

Meanwhile ITeintzelman advanced to the rescue with his 
two divisions. As at Williamsburg, so here, Kearney came 
up at the right moment to restore the battle. Berry's brigade 
of this division, made up of Michigan regiments, and of an 
Irish battalion, advances as firm as a stone wall, through the 
disordered masses which are wavering upon the battle field, 
and does more, by its single example, than the strongest re* 



74 THE ARMY OF TUE POTOMAC. 

inforcements. Nearly a mile of ground had been lost, fifteen 
guns, and the divisional camp of Casey in the advance. But 
now the troops began to stand firm. A sort of line of battle 
was formed across the woods, perpendicularly to the railway 
and to the road, and there the repeated assaults of the enemy 
are met. The left cannot be turned, being protected by tho 
impenetrable morasses of White Oak Swamp ; but the right 
might be surrounded. At this very moment, indeed, a strong 
confederate column is moving in that direction. If it suc- 
ceed in getting between Bottom Bridge and the federal 
troops who are fighting at Savage's Station, the whole left 
wing is lost. It wall have no retreat left, and must be over- 
whelmed. But exactly at this moment (six o'clock p. m.), 
new actors come upon the stage. Sumner, who has at last 
passed the river with Sedgwick's division on the bridge built 
by his troops, and who, with a soldier's instinct, has marched 
straight .to the cannon through the woods, suddenlj^ appears 
upon the flank of the hosiile column which is trying to cut 
off Heintzelman and Keyes. He plants in a clearing a bat- 
tery which he has succeeded in bringing up. His guns are 
not rifled guns, the rage of the hour, and tit only to be fired 
in cool blood, and at long range in an open country ; they are 
real fighting guns, old twelve-pound howitzers carrying either 
a round projectile, which ricochets and rolls, or a good dose 
of grape. The simple and rapid fire of these pieces makes 
terrible havoc in the hostile ranks. In vain Johnston sends 
up his best troops against this battery, the fiower of South 
Carolina, including the Hampton Legion; in vain does he 
come upon the field in person ; nothing can shake the federal 
ranks. AYhen night falls, it was the federals who, bayonet in 
hand, and gallantly led by Sumner himself, charged furiousl}-" 
upon the foe, and drove him before them with fearful slaugh- 
ter, as far as Fair Oaks station. 

Night put an end to the conflict. On either side no one 



THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 75 

knew anything more of the result of the fighting than his 
own eyes had seen. Friends and foes flinging themselves 
down in the woods lay there, among heaps of the dead and 
the dying, wherever the darkness found them. The fatigue 
of this ol)Stinate fight, as well as the shades of night, had 
hronght about one of those tacit truces not uncommon in war. 
Evidently Johnston had imagined that by throwing his 
whole force on the four federal divisions which had crossed 
the Chickah?miny he could crush them before the rest of the 
army could come to their assistance. For the moment he had 
failed, thanks to the energetic resistance of these divisions 
and to the furious and unexpected onslaught of the troops of 
Sumner. No doubt he counted upon the tremendous storm of 
the previous night to swell the Chickahominy so as to make it 
impossible to throw any bridge over the river, and to carry 
away with its flood any bridge already fixed. But the capri- 
cious stream undid his combinations, as a few hours later it 
undid those of his enemies. The eftect of the deluge of rain 
was not immediate. Twenty-four hours passed before it was 
fully felt. Was the interval employed as profitably as it 
ought to have been by tlie federals ? This is a question which 
will always aftbrd a nuitter of controvers}', like so many sim- 
ilar questions which inevitably arise out of the history of 
most great battles. It was not till one in the afternoon that 
the battle began. Some time had been lost under the impres- 
sion that the attack on the rio-ht bank mig-ht be a feint to 
draw over the federal troops while the main body of the con- 
federates was preparing to debouch upon the left bank. An 
end was soon put to all doubts on the subject by the vehem- 
ence of the attack, and by the aeronauts who reported the 
whole confederate army moving to the scene of action. It 
was then that Sumner received the order to pass the river 
with his divisions. He executed it rapidly, marching a little 
ftt liaphazard at the head of his column with no other guide 



76 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

than the cannonade, and arrived at the critical liour and at 
the critical place. Some persons thought tlien, and think still 
that if instead of Sumner alone, all the divisions of the right wing 
had been ordered to cross the river the order could have been 
executed. It is easy to see what must have happened, if in- 
stead of 15,000, 50,000 men had been thrown upon Johnston's 
flank. But Sumner's bridge, no doubt, would not have suf- 
ficed for the passage of such a force. At midnight the rear 
of his column was still struggling slowly to cross this rude 
Btructure against all the difficulties of a roadway formed of 
trunks which slipped and rolled under the horses' feet, of a 
muddy morass at either end, and of a pitchy dark night ren- 
dered darker still by the density of the forest. But several other 
bridges were ready to be thrown across at other points. Not 
a moment should have been lost in fixing them, and no regard 
should have been paid to the eftorts of the enemy to prevent 
this from being done. Johnston had paraded a brigade osten- 
tatiously as a sort of scare-crow at the points which were 
most fitting for this enterprise ; but the stake w^as so vast, the 
result to be sought after so important, the occasion so unex- 
pected and so favorable for striking a decisive blow, that in 
our judgment nothing should have prevented the army from 
attempting this operation at every risk. Here again it paid 
the penalty of that American tardiness which is more marked 
in the character of the army than in tiiat of its leader. It 
was not till seven in the evening that the resolution was taken 
of throwing over all the bridges and passing the whole army 
over by daybreak to the right bank. It was too late. Four 
hours had been lost, and the opportunity, that moment which 
18 ever more fugitive in war than in any other occupation of 
life, had taken wing. The flood on which Johnston liad 
vainly counted and which had not interfered with the passage 
of Sumner, came on in the niglit. The river suddenly rose 
two feet and continued to rise very rapidly, carrying away 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 77 

the new bridges, lifting and sweeping away the trees which 
formed the floor of Sumner's bridge, and covering the valley 
■with its unruly waters. Nothing could cross over. With the 
first light of day the battle began again fiercely on the left 
bank. The enemy came on in masses without order or 
method, and fell upon the federals, who feeling their inferior- 
ity in numbers, and having no hope of succor, attempted to 
do notliing more than to hold their own. The fight raged on 
either side witli savage energy. There was no shouting or 
noise. "Wlien either party was too hard pressed it took to the 
bayonet. The artillery from beyond the clearing sent its 
sliells over the combatants. Ah ! I wish that all those who 
careless of the past and urged on by I know not what selfish 
calculations, have lavislied their encouragements upon this 
fatal slaveholders' rebellion, could have looked in person upon 
this fratricidal strife. I could have asked that as a just punish- 
ment they sliould be condemned to gaze upon that fearful 
battle-field where the dead and the dying were piled up by 
thousands. I could have wished them to see the thousand 
ambulances hastily assembled around those scattered houses. 
What varieties of misery and of anguish ! There was some- 
thing particularly horrible in tlie ambulances. Tlie houses 
were too few to contain even a small minority of the wounded, 
and they had necessarily been heaped up around the field ; 
bnt although they nttered no complaints and bore their fate 
witli the most stoical courage, their exposure under the noon- 
day sun of a burning June soon became intolerable ; and then 
they were to be seen, gathering up what little strength was 
left to them, crawling about in search of a little shade. I 
shall never forget a rose-bush in full bloom, the perfumed 
flowers of which I was admiring while I talked with a friend, 
when he pointed out to me under the foliage one of these poor 
creatures who had just drawn his last breath. We looked at 
^ne another in silence, our hearts filled with the most painful 



78 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

emotions. Sad scenes, fiom which the pen of tlie Avriter, like 
the eye of the spectator, hastens to turn away ! 

Towards noon the firing gradually slackened and ceased. 
The enemy was retreating, but the federals were in no condi- 
tion to pursue him. We did not then know how severe a loss 
the confederates had suffered, in the person of their leader, 
Johnston, grievously wounded. It was mainly to his absence 
that we must attribute the disconnected character of the at- 
tack: made upon the federals in the morning. When the firing 
ceased at noon, the confederates, we were told, (for amid those 
immense forests we heard nothing and must divine every- 
thing,) were in a state of inextricable confusion. What might 
not have hapj^ened, if at this moment the 35,000 fresh troops 
on the other bank of the Chickahominy could have appeared 
upon the flank of this disordered army, after passing the 
bridges in safety ! 

Such is the story of this singular battle, which, complicated 
as it was by incidents beyond human control, may yet, I think, 
be taken as a fair type of American battles."^ The conflict 
had been sanguinary, since the Northern army had lost 5,000, 
and the Southern at least 8,000 men. But the results to either 
party were negative. The confederates, much superior in 
numbers, had made a vigorous attack, had driven back their 
adversaries about a mile, had captured several cannon and 
had stopped there, satisfied with earning thus the right to sing 
the song of. victory. 

The federals had had the defensive battle which they desired, 
had repulsed the enemy, taken a General and many prisoners; 
but arrested by natural obstacles which perhaps were not 
wholly insurmountable, they had gained nothing by their suc- 
cess. 



* I cannot refrain from mentioning here a most characteristic incident: newspaper 
venders were crying the latest New York papers on the battle-field during the 
battle, and they found buyers. 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 79 

111 point of fiici, both sides liad failed for want of organiza- 
tion, for want of liierarchj, for the want of the bond which 
liierarcliy creates between the soul of the General and the 
great body called an army, that powerful bond which suffers 
a Commander to demand and to obtain from the blind confi- 
dence of his troops, those extraordinary efforts by which bat- 
tles are won. Nevertheless, although the losses of the eneray 
were the larger, the check which the federals had received 
was especially disastrous to them. They had missed an 
unique opportunity of striking a decisive blow. 

These opportunities never returned ; and moreover, in the 
then circumstances of the federals, time was working against 
them. 

V. 

The day after this battle, McOlellan recovered, without a 
blow, the stations of Fair Oaks and Seven Pines, so that the 
ai'inies were once more in the same positions as before. For 
nearly a month they looked each other in the face, in a state 
of inaction which yet was not repose. On the contrary, this 
month, witli its overwhelming alternations of heat and rain, 
w^ith the immense labors imposed upon the soldiers, with its 
never-ending alarms and partial combats, was a dreary and 
a trying season. 

The federal army neither wished to offer, nor to invite an- 
other such battle as that of Fair Oaks till its bridges should be 
built, and its two wings put into communication with each 
other. Diluvlan rains were in the way of the result. More- 
over, we had profited by past experience, and we wished to 
give these bridges, together with a monumental solidity, an 
extent of space which should traverse not only tlie river, but 
the whole valley. If we did this, we should have notiiing 



80 THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

more to feiir tVoin inundations, but to do this required uiucli 
time and many efforts. When it was completed, the left wing 
remained exposed to an attack from the whole confederate 
force ; so we hastened to entrench ourselves along our whole 
line. This was a tremendous piece of work. As in all other 
places, redoubts and embankments had to be raised, rifle-pits 
had to be dug, and all this under a broiling sun. We had 
furthermore to cut down the trees on the site selected, and for 
several hundred yards in advance. In some places no earth- 
works were erected, but it was thought sufficient to cut down the 
forest into the contour of a regular fortification. The thickest 
part of the woods left standing and salient in the midst of, a 
vast abattis, played the part of a bastion. The artillery and 
the sharpshooters, placed in this wood, flanked with their fire 
the hedges which represented the curtains. 

The defenders of these new-fashioned works, it is true, had 
no other protection against the hostile fire than the foliage, 
through which it was impossible to draw a direct aim upon 
them. 

All these labors were executed with admirable energy and 
intelligence. In this aspect the American soldier has no 
rival ; patient of fatigue, rich in resources, he is an excellent 
digger and ditcher, an excellent woodman, a good carpenter, 
and even something of a civil engineer. Often in the course 
of the campaign we came upon a flour mill or a saw mill, 
turned sometimes by a water wheel, sometimes by an engine, 
which the enemy as he retired had thrown out of order. You 
were sure to find immediately in the first regiment that came 
up men who could repair, refit, and set them going again for 
the service of the army. But nothing was so remarkalile as 
to see a detail fall to work at making an abattis in the woods. 
It is impossible to give an idea of the celerity with which 
work of this kind was done. I remember to have seen a 
grove a Inmdred acres in extent, of ancestral oaks and other 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 81 

hard wood trees cut down in a single day by a single battalion. 
Nevertheless, all this work was not done without much fatigue 
both moral and material, as the natural consequence of in- 
cessant toil under an incessant fii-e. 

In these vast and pathless woods, where you run a constant 
risk of being surprised, it is impossible to throw out one's ad- 
vance vcr}^ far. So we form what in America is called a 
"picket line," an uninterrupted line of sentinels supported by 
strong reserves, which never move far from the corps to which 
they belong. The two armies were now so near together, and 
so determined to cede no inch of ground that their pickets were 
stationed within hailing distance of one another. Generally 
they got along very amicably together, and contented them- 
selves with a reciprocal watchfulness. Sometimes friendly 
communications took place between them — they trafficked in 
various trifles, and exchanged the Hichmond newspapers for 
the l!^ew York Herald. It even happened one day that some 
federal officers M^ere invited by their confederate comrades to 
a ball in Richmond, on condition that they would suffer their 
eyes to be bandaged in going and returning. But a single 
shot would disturb these good relations — the firing would last 
a greater part of an hour, and a hundred men perliaps be 
killed or wounded before they became quiet again. 

At other times the troops were surprised in their tents by a 
shower of shells, coming nobody knew where from, over the 
heads of the pickets. This was a disagreeable reveillee when 
it happened at night. If it took place in the daytime the men 
would clamber up into some high tree to spy out the spot 
from which the firing came. This would be betrayed by the 
smoke, and sometimes a confederate soldier would be seen 
perched in some towering tree himself directing the fire of the 
artillerymen. Then the federals would reply, and make great 
efiibrts to " bring down" the aerial gunner. These isolated an- 
noyances, whether of " picket firing" or "long-range shelling" 



82 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

troubled nobody but tlie troops immediately exposed. Tliej 
were happening at every hour of the day, and there is noth- 
ing which may not become a habit. But sometimes the mus- 
ketry and the carmon came booming togetlier with a vivacity 
which no one could mistake, and then every one sprang to 
arms, and the staff got into the saddle. The enemy was mak- 
ing a demonstration in force, and we were replying. Would 
a battle grow out of it? 

This constant uncertainty was singularly exhausting. But 
the battle never came. The Southern generals were no more 
anxious than the Northern to bring on prematurely a general 
engagement. They had their plans, and were leaving them to 
ripen. Every da}' brought them new reinforcements, and they 
expected still more. The whole force of the rebellion must 
soon be gathered in upon Richmond. Meanwhile, disease 
ravaged the exhausted soldiers of the federal army. The 
extreme heat combined with the marshy exhalations generated 
fevers which took upon them almost instantly a typhoid char- 
acter. Certain divisions which had already been weakened in 
action had two thousand sick upon their list. A s^^stem of 
temporary and irregular leaves of absence had grown up in 
the army, which also conspired to reduce its effective strength. 
Many colonels arrogated to themselves the right of granting 
leaves of absence for a few days to soldiers who went and 
were seen no more. 

It is right, however, to say that at this critical time General 
McClellan received some small reinforcements. One of his 
old divisions, that of McCall, was restored to him. Moreover, 
Fortress Monroe having been at last put under his orders, he 
had drawn thence some 5 or 6,000 men. This was something, 
but it was not enough ; it was far from being enough to fill 
up the gaps made in the ranks, which widened daily. 

These days of inaction had a further disadvantage, that 
tliev encouraged hostile partisans to dashing enterprises. The 



THE ARMY OF THE TOTOMAC. 83 

feat undertaken by the confederate Colonel Lee was one of 
the most singular episodes of the war. At tlie head of 1,500 
liorsenicn he attacked some squadrons which wore patrol- 
ing at Hanover Court House, dispersed them and made a suc- 
cessful inroad upon the communications of the army. His 
project was to cut off the York river railway, under cover of 
the night; but it did not succeed. We, however, had the sin- 
gular exhibition of a combat between cavalry and a railway 
train ; the train literally charging both the hostile cavalry 
and the obstructions placed on the track, escaped with the loss 
of a few ^iien killed and w^ounded by the fire of the enemy. 
But if Colonel Lee failed to destroy the railway, he made a 
brilliant razzia upon the army stores, and escaped without 
damage to himself. The real mischief done was that attempts 
of this sort might be constantly renewed, and that -we had 
not troops enough to oppose them everywhere at once. 

Although under all these trials the moixila of the army con- 
tinued to be excellent,* it was impossible not to see that the 
expedition was in a critical situation, which was daily grow- 
ing w^orse. Having lost fully one-third of its numbers during 
the campaign, decimated by disease and threatened in the 
rear, the army found itself in the heart of the insurgent terri- 
tory, menaced by forces twice or thrice more numerous than 
itself. It was impossible to think of remaining idle in front 
of the enemy as had been done during the winter at "Washing- 
ton and more recently at Corinth. This General McClellan 
felt ; and as soon as the bridges were fixed he determined to 



* I hardly know whether I ought to mention among other causes which might have 
affected this morale the disagreeable spectacle of the gigantic posters which an em- 
balmer exhibited in the midst of the camp, and in which this tradesman, speculating 
at once upon the losses of the army and on the domestic affections of their friends, 
promised to embalm the slain and send them home at a reasonable rate. This enter- 
prising rival of Gannal, by the way, saved the life of a colonel, who having been 
thrown into a prolonged swoon by the explosion of a shell, was supposed to be dead, 
and having been committed to the embalmer, recovered his consciousness during 
the operation. 



84 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

act. A plan had been thought of by him ; it was to trans- 
port the whole army seventeen miles from its position at that 
time, to abandon the line of communications on the York 
river, and to seek, with the assistance of the navy, a new base 
on the James river. If this movement could be successfully 
and secretly made, the chances of a great battle fought on the 
river bank with the cooperation of the gunboats covering one 
flank of the army, would be much more favorable to the fed- 
erals ; but the movement had dangers of its own, and it was 
not easy of accomplishment in the face of the enemy ; not to 
mention the undesirableness of an apparent retreat.^ 

The plan then was renounced, or at least adjourned. With 
American tenacity, a quality which is just as remarkable 
in the people as their habit of delay, and perhaps balances 
that habit, it was settled that the army should not fall back, 
unless it was absolutely driven so to do. The General wished 
to carry out the operations already commenced ; but he nev- 
ertheless took the wise precaution of sending to City Point 
on the river James, vessels loaded with ammunition, provi- 
sions, and supplies of all sorts. This done, General McClellan 
devoted himself to bringing on a general action on the ground 
lying between himself and Richmond, a ground which he had 
carefully studied in numerous reconnoissances. These recon- 
noissances had given rise to a number of adventures. On one 
occasion the General had climbed with several of his officers, 
to the top of a high tree, and there, every man on his branch 
Vvitli spy-glass in hand, they had held a sort of council of war. 
This took place within a hundred paces of the hostile pickets, 
whom no attempt at observations could escape. We dreaded 
to hear the crack of the rifles of the famous Southern squirrel- 
shooters; but they were magnanimous, and the reconnoissance 
ended without a mishap. On another occasion, the staff" of a 
confederate commander appeared simultaneously with our 
own upon the banks of the Chickahominy. At once the hos- 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 85 

tile gentlemen ordered up one of their bands, wliicli played a 
popular air ; but it was hardly ended before tlie musicians 
gave "Way to a battery, whicli, coming up at full gallop, 
opened a terrible lire, to which we soon responded. These 
examinations convinced us that the enemy was not idle, and 
that he had thrown up works, armed with heavy guns, pre- 
cisely where we did not wish to see them. At last, after 
many experiments, the battle began. On the 25th of June, 
Hooker received his orders to advance a mile, to a large clear- 
ing on the direct road to Richmond. It was calculated that this 
movement would be followed by a general resistance on the 
part of the confederates, which would renew the battle of 
Fair Oaks, with the important difference that our bridges 
being all solidly established, we could command the assistance 
of the whole army. 

If the challenge were not accepted, then we should have 
made one step forward ; we should make another next day, 
and so, by degrees, we should enter Richmond. Moreover, 
we trusted to our star for the rest. Hooker, mounted on a, 
white horse, which made him conspicuous in the woods to all 
of us and to the enemy, advanced gallantly. The ground he 
was to conquer was taken, lost, retaken and finall}'' held by 
him, with a loss of from 400 to 500 men. His two brave 
brigadiers, Groves and Sickles, gave him the most energetic 
assistance ; but during the conflict, serious news had reached 
us. 

Deserters, runaway negroes, the Washington telegraph it- 
self, generally so sober in its information, agreed in this news : 
numerous reinforcements had reached Richmond from the 
South. Beauregard, set free by the cessation of operations in 
the Southwest, had brought the aid of his capacity and of his 
prestige to the pro-slavery cause. Jackson, leaving the eighty 
thousand defenders of Washington breathless from their idle 
chase after him, had completed the concentration of the wliole 



66 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

Southern army. His advance was already at Hanover Court 
House, and his corps, increased by Whiting's division, was 
estimated at 30,000 men. 

The federal attack upon Richmond could no longer be 
, prosecuted ; the presence of Jackson at Hanover Court House 
proved that he intended to attack our communications, and 
cut them off by seizing the York river railway. The manoeu- 
vre was soon put beyond a doubt. A considerable body of 
troops were seen to leave Tiichmond, move in the direction of 
Jackson, and execute that movement to turn us, the danger 
of which we have already pointed out. Profiting by his nu- 
merical superiority, the enemy ofi:ered us battle on both sides 
of the river at once. 

All the chances of success were in his favor. Let the reader 
recall the figure Y which we used in describing the battle of 
Fair Oaks. The situation of tl^e army of McClellan is the 
same now as then, excepting that the two arms of the Y are 
now connected by bridges, which ofler all necessary facilities 
for transporting the diflerent corps rapidly from one bank of 
the river to the other. The federal main body, composed of 
eight divisions, but considerably reduced in efi'ective strength, 
is upon the left arm of the Y — the right bank, that is, of the 
Chickahominy, and occupies the entrenchments which front 
Richmond. Before these troops lies the mass of the hostile 
army, also established in entrenched positions. Upon the 
right arm of the Y, or the left bank of the river, lies the fede- 
ral General Fitz John Porter, with two divisions and the regu- 
lar reserves. Against him it was that Jackson marched with 
the corps of General Hill from Richmond, the whole being 
under the orders of General Lee, who had succeeded Johnston 
in the chief command. 

Substantially, then, the Army of the Potomac was about to 
engage two armies each equal in force to itself. Battles have 
sometimes been won in such circumstances. But no one should 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 87 

count upon such favors from fortune. The best thing to be 
done was to get well out of so critical a position. There was 
nothing for it but to retreat promptly ; unluckily, however, 
this was not to be so easily done. We had a choice of dangers. 
To concentrate on the left bank of the Chickahominy was to 
abandon the enterprise against liichmond, and to risk a dis- 
astrous retreat upon "White House and Yorktown, with tlie 
whole confederate army at our heels, in a country where we 
could hope for no support. There was no good to be expected 
from this plan. To pass to the right bank was to risk the ene- 
my's cutting our communications Avith "White House, and seiz- 
ing tlie railway which brought our supplies. We should then 
be forced to open new communications with the James river, 
and to move in that direction en viasse and with no delay. 
This would be a retreat, but for a few miles only, and if we 
were but moderately reinforced, with the support of the navy, 
we could reassume the offensive either against Richmond 
itself, on the right bank of the river, or against Petersburg on 
the left, the fall of that place involving the fall of Richmond 
McClellan chose the latter course. 

As we have said, he had long considered it as one of the 
necessities of his position, and had even taken some contingent 
steps in regard to it, the wisdom of which was about to be 
signally vindicated ; but there was a vast difference between 
making this retreat at one's own time and by a free, spontane- 
ous movement, and making it hastily under the threatening 
pressure of two hostile armies. But there was no time for de- 
liberation. The resolution taken upon the spur of the moment 
must be carried at once into effect. The distance from Fair 
Oaks to the James river was not great ; it was but seventeen 
miles. But the stores and baggage had to be moved upon a 
single road, exposed in front to the enemy, who by several 
different roads radiating from Eichmond could throw a con- 
siderable force upon several different points at once. The 



88 THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

speed with whicli the operation was conducted npset hi? 
calculations : he probably supposed that we should feel the 
ground before we acted, and perhaps he thoug-ht that McClel- 
lan would find it hard to make up his mind to abandon his 
lines at White House. He acted at least as if this were his 
view. The troops of General Hill, mentioned above, having 
crossed the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge on the 26th, the 
day after the aifair with Hooker, in the afternoon attacked 
the troops of McCall, the advance of Porter on the left bank. 
This first conflict was very severe ; but McCall occupied a strong 
position at Beaver Dam, a sort of ravine bordered with beau- 
tiful catalpa trees, then in floAver. There he had made abattis 
and thrown up some earth so that he could not be overcome, 
notwithstanding the length of the fight which lasted until 
nightfall. This vigorous resistance compelled the enemy to 
throw numerous reinforcements across the river. This was 
exactly what General McClellan desired. His intention was 
to fix the attention of the enemy here while on the right bank 
he prepared liis movement to the James river. 

The night was spent in 2")assing over to this bank the whole 
of Porter's baggage and uniting it with the long train which 
was to set out in the evening of the 27th. The orders were 
given to re-embark or destroy all the stores and magazines 
along the railway to White House and to evacuate that depot. 
General Stoneman with a flying column was charged with the 
execution of this order. He was to delay the advance of the 
enemy and fall back when he had done his duty upon York- 
town. All this was carried out exactly. At daybreak on the 
2Yth, McCall was ordered to fall back on the bridges thrown 
across the Chickahominy at Gaines's Mill. Followed up rap- 
idly, as he had expected to be, he joined the other troops of 
Porter's corps, the division of Morell and the regulars com- 
manded by General Sykes. Porter's duty, demanding as 
much self-possession as vigor, was to make a stand in front oi 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 89 

the bridges in order to give tlie army time to aceomplisli its 
jxeneral movement. He was not to cross the bridg-es till the 
evening of the 27th, and was then to destroy them. His three 
divisions were attacked early in the day. The corps of Jack- 
son coming in from Hanover Court House, took part in the 
action. The battle was fought in a rolling country, extensively 
wooded, but upon certain points open and clea-red. The strug- 
gle was arduous ; the federals resisted with success ; there 
was even one moment at which Porter might have thought 
himself victorious. This would have been a great advantage, 
and might have profoundly modified the position. Accord- 
ingly, during this moment of hope, McClellan hastened to throw 
upon the left bank all the troops not absolutely necessary to 
guard the lines in front of Richmond, One division, that of 
Slocum, crossed, the bridges before four o'clock and joined in 
the action. Another, Richardson's, reached the scene only at 
nightfall. At the moment when these reinforcements began 
to take part in the fight, the scene had an imposing character of 
grandeur. We had 35,000 men engaged, a part in the woods, 
a part in the plain, forming a line a mile and a half long. A 
numerous artillery thundered upon every side. In the valley 
of the Chickahominy the lancers with floating pennons were 
stationed as a reserve ; and this whole animated picture of the 
battle was set in a picturesque landscape illuminated by the 
last rays of the sun going down below a horizon as crimson as 
blood. Suddenly the volleys became extraordinarily intense. 
The reserves, which had till now been lying in the hollows, 
were called up, excited by shouts, and sent into the woods. 
The musketry becomes more and more violent, and rolls away 
toward the left. There can no longer be any doubt that the 
enemy is making a final effort on that side. The reserves are 
all engaged, there is not a disposable man left. It is six 
o'clock, the da^dight is fast disappearing ; if the federal army 
can hold out an hour longer the battle is won, for at every 



90 THE ARMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

other point tlie enemy lias been repulsed, and Jackso.i, Hill, 
Lee, and Longstreet will liave urged up tlieir troops in vain. 
For lack of infantry. Porter lias put three batteries en jMienoe 
on his extreme left to support the troops who are there sus- 
taining an unequal fight ; but these troops have been in action 
since early morning, they are worn out, and have fired almost 
their last cartridge. Now in their turn come up the confed- 
erate reserves ; they deploy regularly into line against the fed- 
eral left which gives way, breaks and disbands. The disorder 
grows from point to point till it reaches the centre of the fed- 
eral lines. There is no panic ; the men do not fly in the wild 
excitement of fear ; but deaf to every appeal, they inarch off 
deliberately, their muskets at the shoulder, like people who 
have had enough of it, and do not believe success possible. In 
vain do the generals, the ofiicers of the stafi", among them the 
Count of Paris and the Duke of Chartres, ride sword in hand 
into the melee to stop their disorderly movement ; the battle 
of Gaines's Mill is lost. There is nothing left but to prevent 
a rout. The enemy, indeed, was advancing on the plain still 
in the same order, his infantry deployed by regiments en 
echelon, and every minute he was closing in upon the confused 
masses of the federals. Such is the fury of the cannonade and 
the musketry fire that the cloud of dust struck up from the 
ground floats steadily over the battle. Then came the oi'dei 
for the cavalry to charge. I happened at this moment to be 
near its position. I saw the troopers draw their swords with 
the sudden and electrical impulse of determination and devo- 
tion. As they got into motion, I asked a young officer the 
name of his regiment. " The Fifth cavalry," he replied, bran- 
dishing his sabre with a soldier's pride in his regiment. Un- 
fortunate young man ! I saw the same regiment next day. 
From the charge of that evening but two officers had return- 
ed. He was not one of them. 

The charge failed against the dense battalions of the enemy, 



THE AEMY OF THE POTOMAC. 91 

and the broken regiments galloping through the artillery and 
the flying infantry in the clouds of dust only increased the 
general disorder. The artillery horses were killed, and I saw, 
with painful emotion, the men working with the courage of 
desperation at guns which could no longer be removed. They 
dropped one after another. Two alone were left at last, 
and they continued to load and fire almost at point blank 
range upon the enemy. Then the deepening twilight hid the 
scene. All these guns were lost. 

General Butterfield had made in vain the most superhuman 
efforts to save them. On foot, his horse having been shot, 
struck in the hat by the fragment of a shell, and his sabre hit 
by a ball, surrounded by his aids-de-camp, of whom several 
fell at his side, he had tried to rally the infantry around a flag 
planted in the ground. He succeeded, but only for a few mo- 
ments; tlie precipitate rush of the retreat carried everything 
away. Happily, night came on, and after losing a mile of ground, 
the army reached the fresh brigades of Meagher and French, 
which were formed in good order. These brigades sent up a 
vigorous hurrah, and a few guns put anew in battery opened 
their fire upon the enemy, wdio paused at last, checked by this 
final and determined resistance. 

As the last guns of this action were firing, we heard a lively 
rattle of musketry from the direction of Fair Oaks, on the 
other side of the river. It came from the confederates who 
Avere attacking the federal works ; but the attack, which was 
l)robably only a demonstration, was vigorously repelled. 

The day had been severe. In the main battle, that of 
Gaines's Mill, 35,000 federals had failed to defeat 60,000 con- 
federates, but they had held them in check. More could not 
have been expected. 

During the night the federals repassed the bridges of the 
Chickahominy in perfect order, destroying them after they 
had passed. They left behind them the field of battle, covered 



92 THE AEMY OP THE POTOMAC. 

witli the dead (for in this fierce conflict the losses on both sides 
had been considerable) a great number of wounded, too much 
Iiurt to be moved, a dozen guns, and a few prisoners, among 
whom was General Reynolds. The corps of Keyes, which 
was in the advance, fell back also towards James river, and 
took possession of the passage of a large morass, "White Oak 
Swamp, which is traversed by the road the army was to take as 
well as by the principal lines of communication which could be 
used by the enemy to harass us. 

The 28th and 29tli of June were passed in sending for- 
ward the train of five thousand wagons, the siege train, a 
herd of twenty-five hundred oxen, and other impedirae7'da. 
The reader may judge what a piece of work this was, when 
he reflects that it was all to be done upon a single narrow 
road. The first day we were undisturbed ; the enemy was ex- 
hausted by the previous day's battle ; he seemed, moreovei', 
astonished and disconcerted, and did not yet fully understand 
the object of the federal army. The whole of this array was 
united on the right bank of the Chickahominy, whilst the bulk 
of the confederate forces was upon the left bank, and the 
bridges were down. To recross the river, the}^ would be 
forced either to build new bridges or to fall back some dis- 
tance to the Mechanicsville bridge ; either of which opera- 
tions involved time. Now, time was everything, and the re- 
treating army put it to good use. It was not until the 29tli 
that the southern columns came in sight of the federal rear- 
guard. A battle at once began, at Savage's Station, but the 
enemy were vigorously received, and after repulsing them the 
federals waited till nightfall before recommencing their march. 
The last duty done by the telegraph the day before was to in- 
form us that the confederates were at White House. This 
post they had found abandoned. The morning of the 29th 
had been spent by us in destroying all that could not be car- 
ried away from the camps. A complete railway train, loco- 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 93 

motive, tender, and cars, wbicli had been left on the rails was 
sent headlong over the broken bridge into the river. Nothing 
was left for the foe but three siege guns which could not be 
moved, and which we neglected to burj. These were the 
onl}' siege guns he captured, although the storj has been every- 
wliere repeated that he took the whole federal siege train with 
the exception of tliese three pieces. The whole of that train 
reached the James river in safety. Our great misfortune was, 
that we were obliged to abandon so many of our wounded, not 
only at Gaines's Mill and at Savage's Station, but along the 
whole line of retreat. This misfortune was inevitable. It 
was only by ceaseless fighting that we could protect our 
retreat, and the transportation of so many wounded men 
would have required conveniences which we did not possess. 

General McClellan, during the 29th, and the morning of 
the 30th, renuxined near White Oak Swamp, urging on the 
passage of his enormous train. The heat was overwhelming. 
His aids-de-camp, continually galloping from the rear-guard 
to the advance, were utterly exhausted. So long as this huge 
train divided the different parts of the army we were in great 
danger. But nothing disturbed the serene self-possession of 
the General-in-Chief. On the 29th, he had stopped, I remem- 
ber, to rest in the verandah of a house by the way side, when 
the mistress of the establishment came to complain to him that 
the soldiers were eating her cherries. The General rose w^itli 
a smile, went himself and put a stop to the pillage. But he 
could not prevent the shells, next day, from setting fire to the 
house of his pretty hostess. 

At daybreak on the 30th McClellan had the satisfaction of 
seeing all his troops and all his trains in safety beyond White 
Oak Swamp which was to opj)ose a new barrier to the pur- 
suit of the enemy. By the evening of the next day Generals 
Keyes and Porter were in communication with the gunboats 
on the James. Tlie trains had moved upon roads pointed out 



94 THE ARJIY OF THE POTOMAC. 

by the negro guides. The heads of the colunnis liad met 
nothing bnt small detachments of cavalry, which tliey had 
easily dispersed. The hardest part of the work was done, but 
it was to be supposed that the enemy would renew his at- 
tempt to disturb the retreat. So the General took his meas- 
ures in time. He left Sumner and Franklin to act as the 
rear-guard, and hold the passage of "Wliite Oak Swamp : and 
put Heintzelman with the divisions of Hooker, Kearney, 
Sedgwick and McCall, across the point of intersection of the 
roads leading from Richmond. They protected the trains 
and reached the James river at the exact moment when the 
transports with provision and ammunition, and tlie hospital 
ships which with wise foresight General McClellan liad 
ordered up ten days before, arrived from Fortress Monroe. 

Meanwhile, as had been expected, Franklin and Sumner 
were sharply attacked in White Oak Swamp, to which point 
the confederate Generals had brought a large force of artillery. 
Tliey fell back step by step. Later in the day Heintzelman 
also was attacked at the Cross-roads. Here, the battle raged 
with varying fortune, in the woods. The division of McCall 
suffered severely, and its commander was made prisoner ; but 
Hooker and Kearney, coming to his help repulsed the assail- 
ants with great loss. They did not however, succeed in res- 
cuing the General, who was sent into Richmond to join 
Reynolds. 

Finally, a third attack upon the corjjs of Fitz-John Porter 
failed utterly under the combined fire of the field artillery, 
and the gunboats. Porter occupied a superb position at a 
place called Turkey Bend, by some persons, and Malvern 
Hill by others. This position was a lofty open plateaii 
sloping gradually down to the roads by which the enemy 
must debouch. The left rested upon the river, where lay the 
Galena, the Monitor, and the flotilla of gunboats. The 
federal array then had nothing to fear from this side, and had 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 95 

consequently only one flank to protect, wliicli was easily done 
with abattis and field works. On tlie evening of the 30th all 
the divisions of the army were united in this strong position, 
and here the whole train including the siege guns was shel- 
tered. The army was in communication with its transports 
and supplies. The grand and daring movement by which it 
had escaped a serious danger and changed an untenable base 
of operations for one more safe and sure, had been accom- 
plished ; but after so j)rolonged an eifort the troops were worn 
out ; for five days they had been incessantly marching and 
fighting. The heat had added to their excessive fatigue ; 
many men had been sun struck ; others quitted the ranks and 
fell into the lamentable procession of sick and wounded 
which followed the army as well as it could, and as fast as it 
could. Doubtless during this diflicult retreat, there had been 
moments of confusion and disorder, but of what army in like 
circumstances would not this have been true ? This one fact 
remained unassailable; that attacked in the midst of a diffi- 
cult and hostile country by twice its own force, the Army of 
the Potomac had succeeded in gaining a position in which it 
was out of danger, and from which, had it been properly re- 
inforced, had the concentration of the enemy's forces been 
met by a like concentration, it might have rapidly resumed 
the offensive. 

As we have said, each of its necessarily scattered sections 
had for five days been called upon to resist the most furious 
assaults and had done so with vigor. Now that it was as- 
sembled as a whole upon Malvern Hill the confederate army 
also reunited might possibly make a last effort against it. So 
in the night of the 30th of June and 1st of July McClellan 
prepared himself for tiiis eventuality. He put his whole artil- 
lery, at least three hundred guns, into battery along tlie heights 
arranging tliem in such wise that their fire should not inter- 
fere with the defence by the infantry of the sort of glacis ip 



96 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

which tlie enemy would be obliged to advance to the attack. 
The artillery fire was to be reinforced by the 100-pounders 
of the gunboats which were ordered to flank the position. It 
was mere madness to rush upon such obstacles ; but the confed- 
erates attempted it. Again and again during the day of the 
1st of July tliej^ undertook to carry Malvern Hill, but without 
the slightest chance of success. The whole day for them was 
an idle butchery. Their loss was very heavy ; that of the 
federals insignificant. This success was due to two causes. 
First, to the fortunate foresight of the General, wdio, in spite of 
numerous natural obstacles to the passage of artillery, had 
spared nothing to bring his on, and next to the firmness of his 
troops. Men do not make such a campaign, and go through 
such experience as the}^ had endured, without coming out 
more or less formed to war. If their primitive organization 
had been better, the survivors of this rude campaign, I do not 
fear to assert, might be regarded as the equals of the best 
soldiers in the world. 

On the evening after this battle the exhausted enemy re- 
tired to appear no more, and the army of the Potomac took 
up a position and sought rest at Harrison's Bar, a spot chosen 
by the engineers and the navy as the most favorable for de- 
fence and for i-eceiviug supplies. The campaign against Rich- 
mond had ended, without success, but not without honor. 
The honor of the army w^as safe ; but those who had looked 
to success for the early restoration of the Union under an im- 
pulse of generous and patriotic conciliation saw their hopes 
unhappily fade away. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. V' 

VI. 

Here I pause. My object in this narrative has been to 
describe the character of an American army, to make my 
readers acquainted with the peculiarities of war in countrie? 
so different from our own, and with the varied difficulties, 
aeainst which a general has there to contend. I have related 
with equal candor my good and my bad impressions. The 
good which I have seen there has often moved me to admira- 
tion : the evil has never weakened the sentiments of deep 
sympathy which I feel for the American people. I have also 
tried to lay my linger upon the sad concatenation of blundere 
and accidents which has brought about tlie failure of the 
great attempt made to re-establish the Union. I shall not 
venture to question the future upon the consequences of thia 
failure. Tliey will come to light only too soon. It would be 
idle and ridiculous to predict to-day the final destiny of the 
combatants, to foretell which of the two will display the great- 
est tenacity, will prove itself, if I may be pardoned the phrase, 
to have the better wind. 

One thing is certain; the failure of McClellan's campaign 
against liichmond is destined to be followed by the effusion 
of seas of blood : it prolongs a strife, the fatal effects of which 
are not felt in America alone; it adjourns the most desirable 
solution of the crisis, the return of the States to the old Union. 
I say the old Union designedly, because I am one of those 
who think that if the ISTorth were beaten, decidedly beaten, 
that if the right of the minority to resist by arms the decisions 
of universal suffrage were victoriously established, the Union 
might still perhaps be reestablished. But it would then be 
reestablished by the conspicuous triumph of Slavery. 



98 THE AmiY OF THE POTOMAC. 

If the federal bond were to be finally broken between the 
North and the South, it would soon be broken, also, be- 
tween the States wdiich form the Northern Union. Each one 
of them would then consider only its own interests, while the 
South would be more and more closely united by the power- 
ful bond of Slaveiy. It would have shown how strong it is ; 
would have acquired great prestige, and would exercise that 
power of attraction which always goes with success and with 
power. 

Victorious, it would extend its grasp not only over the now 
contested States of Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia ; but 
over Marj'hmd also. Baltimore would become the depot of 
all foreign commerce. The iron of England would then en- 
ter the heart of Pennsylvania. Who can say that this State, 
the population of which pcM-haps dislikes the negro at liberty 
as much as it does the negro in slavery, would not decide to 
make its peace v/ith the powerful confederacy in return for 
the commercial protection which the confederacy would be 
only too glad to offer it? For the Southern States favor free 
trade only because it suits their immediate purpose. Once 
masters of the situation, they would become genuine Ameri- 
cans again. New York would follow the example of Pennsyl- 
vania. Commerce does not suit the people of the South. They 
need some one to look after their business. In all probability 
a similar movement would affect the "Western States, all whose 
outlets would be in the hands of the confederates. Tlie States 
of New England alone, where puritanism holds its sway, and 
slavery is sincerely hated, would remain isolated, and exist 
upon the products of their agriculture, and the resources call- 
ed into being by the enterprise of their active and numerous 
maritime population. With the exception of six States then, 
and probably of California also, which, separated from the rest 
of the world, has altogether exceptional interests of her own, 
the old Union would be reconstructed. But the ideas of the 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 99 

boiitii would be in the ascendant. The (glorification and exten- 
sion of slavery would be tlie common watcliword. Founded by 
force of arms, the confederation would be an essentially mili- 
tary power. The slave aristocracy would have gained its 
sway, would have tasted the intoxication of glorj^, and would 
no longer acknowledge any restraint. Conservative at home, 
but ao:2:i'essive abroad, it would no lono-er be controlled bv 
the cool and almost British good sense of the mercantile 
North. "With the impulse given to commerce by the return 
of peace, and therewith consequent prosperity, the confeder- 
acy, constituted as I describe it, would become a formidable 
power, and those who desire to see, more than aught else, a 
powerful State in Northern America, might give it their sym- 
pathies, if it had an}^ chances of permanency. 

But here is the difficulty. You may do great things with 
Slavery : acquire fabulous wealth in a short time, as of old in 
St. Domingo ; call a whole population under arms, while the 
blacks till the ground, and so sustain a disproportionate strug- 
gle such as we now see going on in Virginia : but these are tran 
sient efforts, and in the long run, slavery exhausts, ruins, and 
demoralizes all that it touches. Compare the destinies of two 
great neighboring cities, Louisville and Cincinnati : compare 
the fate of the first, notwithstanding its immense natural ad- 
vantages, under the enervating influence of slavery, with the 
development which its rival owes to Liberty. The fate of 
Louisville would be that of a Slaveholding Uniort. 

The old Union, on the contrary, with its slow and prudent, 
but certain advance towards gradual emancipation, would 
have resembled Cincinnati. The old Union was a mercan- 
tile nation, furnishing Europe with the raw materials indis- 
pensable to her industry and offering her an unlimited market 
for her productions. This nation was useful to all the world, 
and whatever appearances may have been, it was not at bot- 
tom hostile to anybody. . , . 



100 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 

The new Union would be military and aggressive, a condi- 
tion of things favorable to some Powers, but unfavorable to 
others : the first was liberal and pacific ; the second would 
have no other spirit of progress, no other system of assimilation 
than the spirit of war and the system of conquest. 

Such, we think, would be the results of a Southern triumph. 
If on the other liand the conflict is to be prolonged, if the 
solution of this great debate is still to be delayed, then we 
must look for mischief of another sort. Urged by the pas- 
sions and the pressure of the contest, the federal government 
may perhaps decree the immediate abolition of slavery, and 
may even be driven to the terrible resort of arming the slaves 
against their masters ; but this measure, independently of its 
barbarity and violence, would be of no use to those who 
should adopt it. It would bring on in the North itself for- 
midable dissensions more likely to help than to harm the 
cause of the Secessionists. 

Need I add, that in the future seen under thp aspect I have 
sketched, there is nothing which can meet the wishes of the 
friends of American liberty and greatness ? When the block- 
ade of the Southern coast had become complete, when the 
wliole course of the Mississippi had fallen into the power of 
the federal navy, those friends longed for the triumph of the 
Army of the Potomac before Richmond, because it would 
have facilitated a complete reconciliation on the basis of the 
old Union. This triumph was not achieved ; we have seen 
why ; and reconciliation such as then was desirable and possi- 
ble, seems very different to-day. Yet I am not one of those 
who will thence infer that the federal cause is lost. Com- 
pared to those of the South, the resources of the North are 
far from being exhausted ; and who knows all that in a day 
of peril can be done by the energy of a free people, battling 
for the right and for humanity ? 



APPENDIX. 



Note A.-Page 8. 
MILITARY PREPARATIONS OF THE SOUTH. 

The author here repeats in his estimate of the advantages 
with which the insurgent South began the war, an impression 
BO general at the North that it may be considez-ed to have be- 
come almost an article of faith, yet which I am constrained 
to believe erroneous. Tlie "permanent militia" of the South 
here alluded to existed only upon paper, like the similar militia 
of tlie North. There w^ere, it is true, in two or three of the 
States, and particularly in South Carolina and in Virginia, 
small bodies of troops maintained at tlie public expense for 
the protection of important arsenals or other public works, 
but these were insignificant in point of numbers. The " State 
Guard " of Virginia numbered not more, I think, than forty 
men, whose chief duty was to sentinel the Richmond Peniten- 
tiary and to inspect the statue of Henry Clay on the Capitol 
Square. The organization of the Southern militia was very 
far from deserving the encomium here passed upon it. It was 
in truth far inferior to the organization of the militia in cer- 
tain States of the North, and particularly in Massachusetts 
and New York. The regimental organization which had been 
carried to such a respectable point of development in New 
York was almost unknown in the South. A few independent 
companies like the "Blues" of Richmond and Savannah, the 
" Washington Light Infantry " of Charleston, the " Washing- 
ton Artillery" of New Orleans,.and the "Richmond Howitzers" 

(101) 



102 APPENDIX. 

were as far advanced perhaps towards an adequate prepara- 
tion for actual service when the war broke out, as any other 
militia companies in the country ; but it is certain that in the 
whole South there were not so many well-drilled, uniformed, 
and efficient companies capable of acting together, regimen- 
tally, as would have sufficed to put a regiment at once on a war 
footing. The Seventh and the Seventy-first regiments of New 
York State Militia were bodies of men not to be matched in 
the South. 

The military schools of Yirginia and of South Carolina had 
no doubt educated a certain number of young men in the 
course of the last ten years to a higher degree of preparation 
for the duties of officers in the field than was brought to the 
service of the nation by the average volunteer officers of the 
armies first raised in the north ; and I believe there is no 
doubt that Mr. Davis, Mr. Floyd, and particularly Mr. Henry 
A. Wise, did a great deal during the four years from 1856 to 
1860 towards accustoming the Southern people to the idea of 
a moi'e extensive military system than their manner of life 
and the geographical conditions of the country had previ- 
ously encouraged. The "John Brown raid" contributed 
powerfully to the success of these efibrts. 

But the first armies called into the field by the South were 
quite as nnmilitary in organization and not so military in 
appearance as their contemporaries at the North. The con- 
trast between the bearing and equipment of the troops from 
Massachusetts, Yermont and New York, which I saw pass 
through New York in the Spring of 1861, on their way to 
Washington, and the army of General Johnston which I saw 
at Harper's Ferry in June of that year, might almost have 
exaused the hasty self-confidence with which the North rushed 
into the operation of " crushing out the rebellion." 

The author is equally at fault in his fm-ther discussion of 
this subject when he attributes to Mr. Davis the merit of 



APPENDIX. 108 

haviug solidified tlie southeru army b j liis j udicious appoint- 
ments of oiJicers. In point of fact the nomination of tlie line 
officers of tlie soutliern volunteer forces wliicli still constitute 
the great bulk of the southern army is not, and never has 
been in the hands of Mr. Davis. These officers are elected 
by their men ; and it was a fact notorious in Richmond at 
the time of the battle of Fair Oaks that the chaotic condition 
into wliich the southern army fell, during that light and par- 
ticularly after the fall of General Johnston, vas mainly at- 
tributable to the fact that in re-organ iiiing the army in April 
and May, a vast proportion of tlie best officers of the line had 
been thrown out of commission in favor of others who had 
courted popularity by arts un-military, and who were wholly 
incompetent to the management of their troops. " Hierarchy 
and discipline " are things of very recent growth in the south- 
ern army. I have heard it stated, upon respectable authority 
in Virginia, that at the battle of Bull Run, in July, 1861, 
whole battalions of southern troops deliberately marched out 
of the fight, precisely as the author describes some of Fitz- 
John Porter's regiments to have done at the battle of Gaines's- 
Mills. 

Mr. Davis attempted, indeed, very early in the war to 
assume a general authority over the troops of the States. 
But he was met at the outset by the State authorities. At 
the head-quarters of General Johnston, to which I made a 
short visit in June, 1861, I saw for myself the difficulties 
thrown in the way of the confederate commanders, by the im- 
possibility of their doing precisely what the author commends 
them for doing. In Georgia, the issue between the confeder- 
ate and state organizations was made very early and very 
decisively by Governor Brown. Colonel Bartow, (afterwards 
killed at Bull Run,) having received a confederate commission 
and raised a regiment of men, applied to the state for arms.. 
These the Governor refused to supply, declaring that Georgia 



104 APPENDIX. 

should arm no troops whom slie did not commission and or- 
ganize, lie should not prevent Bartow from going to Virginia, 
with as many men as chose to follow him, and when they 
reached Virginia, if anybody would give them arms they 
might Ibrm themselves into a rcgiaient. But they would not 
be Georgian troops, and Georgia knew nothing about them. 
Colonel Bartow, raised quite a controversy over this matter, 
but the Governor was sustained by the people, and Bartow's 
men (who by the way followed him gallantly on the field of 
Manassas) were known as the " Independent regiment." 

Note B.— Page 9. 

FLOYD AND THE SOUTH. 

The Prince's charge against Mr. Buchanan's too famous 
Secretary, that lie sent " all the contents of the federal arsen- 
als to the South," is a clean case of crescit eundo. If the South 
liad no positions more defensible than the character of Mr. 
Floyd, its conquest would indeed be easy : but that is no ex- 
cuse for extravagant misrepresentations, which, if they have 
any force at all, only help to relieve us of responsibilities 
which we ought to accept. That Floyd would have been only 
too glad to send all the arras, and all the arsenals, too, of the 
country to the South, is doubtless true, but there were obsta- 
cles in the way of either operation, and it has never yet been 
clearly proved that he deprived any IlTorthern State of her 
just quota of arms to the advantage of any Southern State. 
Indeed, he is blamed at the South for not doing what he is 
blamed at the North for doing; the simple fact being that he 
could not possibly do it. It was no doubt the opportunity 
and not the will which he lacked. For I remember that at 
Washington, in the winter of 1860-61, jnst before Floyd went 
to Virginia, he did his best to persuade certain southern lead- 
ers into a plan for a rl>ing in "Washington, or failing in that, 



APPENDIX. 105 

for the seizure and removal to tlie South of General Scott. 
He was excessively disgusted at his inability to accomplish 
an organization for either purpose. 

President Davis, who detests Mr. Floyd, seized upon his 
conduct at the surrender of Fort Donelson as a good occasion 
for disgracing him, and ordered him into arrest. He remain- 
ed for some time at his home in Western Virginia, his particu- 
lar organ, the " Richmond Examiner," meanwhile grinding 
forth, almost daily, imprecations upon the confederate govern- 
ment for its neglect of the " great soldier who had kept Rose- 
crans chained to the Gauley," and the "great statesman who 
had first warned the South to expect nothing from lalse and 
selfish England." The Legislature of the State was finalh' dra- 
gooned into providing for him. Authority was given him 
through tlie Governor, to raise ten thousand men, and he was 
commissioned a Major-General of Virginia. Whetlier he ever 
raised the men or not, I do not know. He had not done so 
three months ago. 

I mention these circumstances, because I observe that the 
"Richmond Examiner" is constantly quoted at the North, as 
the representative of southern sentiment in general, whereas 
it is a fact notorious in Richmond, and indeed self-evident to 
any person whose unfortunate destiny has ever put him in the 
way of a prolonged familiarity with southern journalism, that 
the "Examiner" is simply the mouth-piece of Mr. Floyd's 
disappointed ambitions, political, military and diplomatic. 

Note C— Page 27. 
THE EVACUATION OF MANASSAS. 

I HAVE reason to believe that when the history of the pre- 
sent war shall come to be written fairly and in full, it will be 
found that General Johnston never intended to hold Manassas 
and Centreville against any serious attack ; that his array at 



106 APPENDIX. 

tliese points liad suifcred greatly during tlic autumn and win- 
ter of 1801-2 ; that from Oct jber to March, he never had an 
eflfective force of more thar 40,000 men under his orders ; 
that his preparations for an evacuation were begun as early 
as October, 1861, and that after that time he lay there simply 
in observation. 

It was the opinion of accomplished officers of the southern 
army, that the reduction of Richmond would never be really 
attempted excepting by the valley of the Shenandoah, in a 
campaign intended to cut off the capital and the army from 
their connections with the west by the James river canal, and 
the Virginia, and Tennessee railways ; or by the James and 
York rivers, in precisely such a movement as that which the 
Prince de Joijiville states that it was the intention of General 
McClellan to make, had not his plans been disconcerted by 
the untimely and unnecessary revelation of them to which 
the Prince so delicately but so distinctly alludes. General 
D. II. Hill expected the campaign of the Shenandoah, but, 
it is my impression that the majority of the confederate com- 
manders looked with more anxiety for the final advance of 
McClellan in the direction which it now appears that it was 
his intention to follow. The confederate government, how- 
ever, scarcely anticipated any serious campaign from either 
quarter, and amused with dreams of an early peace through 
the influence of European intervention and of politico-finan- 
cial causes at the J^orth, kept Johnston's army in a position 
of observation on the Potomac, and utterly neglected all 
adequate preparations against such an expedition as the 
Prince relates General McClellan to have been silently pre- 
paring during the winter of 1861-2. There can be little 
doubt that the completion of the Merrimac in time to close 
the James river against our fleets, was quite as much a matter 
of chance as of design ; the Secretary of the confederate navy 
having small faith in the work, and the people at large no 



APPENDIX. 107 

faith at ail. My own impression is, tliat the movement of 
General McClellan's army from its demonstrations along the 
Potomac to the base upon the James, selected for its opera- 
tions against Richmond, could it have been put into execution 
as the author planned it, might well have proved so eminent- 
ly and brilliantly successful, as to take its place in military 
history w^ith such openings of a campaign, as Moreau's pass- 
age of the Rhine in 1800, and the Marshal de Saxe's sudden 
and mao;uificent transition from the demonstrations against 
Antwerp to the operations against Maestricht, in the Flemish 
campaign of 1748. 

Note D.— Page 59. 
CENSORSHIP OF THE SOUTHERN PRESS. 

The Prince only echoes a belief very general at the North, 
when he speaks of the " Complete Censorship of the Southern 
Press," but this belief is certainly unfounded. It is a curious 
trait of the existing war that every attempt on tlie part of the 
Richmond government to exercise a centralized control over 
the institutions of the different seceded States has been in- 
stantly, and so far as I know, successfully repelled by public 
sentiment. Reporters for the press were excluded from the 
lines of the Southern armies in the field early in the current 
year, but this was a military measure, and was acquiesced in 
as such, A tacit agreement subsequently grew up between • 
1 lie War Department and the Press that great reticence should 
be observed in regard to military movements. But a propo- 
sition to establish a formal censorship, made in January or 
February, 1861, was instantly sneered and shouted down 
throughout the South, and when, not very long afterwards, 
the commander of the department of Henrico, Brigadier- 
General Winder, permitted himself to threaten certain papers 
in Richmond with "suppression,'^ he was met with open and 



108 APPENDIX. 

contemptuous defiance ; and very promptly modified liis pre- 
tensions with no unnecessary delay. AVluitever " censorship" 
exists at all in the South is a censorship of passion and not of 
power. 

Note E.— Page 63. 
RESPECT FOR SOUTHERN PROPERTY. 

It is equally astonishing and unfortunate that the policy of 
forbearance in respect to the property and the persons of non- 
combatants in Yirginia should ever have been the subject of 
unfavorable discussion in Congress. Aside from the abstract 
question involved, and from the moral influence of our prac- 
tice in this particular upon the opinion of the world, it was 
only necessary to read the Richmond papers to perceive how 
anxiously the southern leaders desired to see us concede that 
disgraceful license of plunder and cruelty to the whole army 
which certain general officers of the army of the Potomac are 
alleged to have put to profit, until the practice was prevented 
by peremptory orders from the General-in-Chief. Confederate 
oflicers, who served in Western Yirginia, at the beginning of 
the war, testified strongly, in my hearing, to the " bad ejQPect" 
upon their men of General McClellan's forbearance and kind- 
ness towards the prisoners whom he paroled after the defeat 
of General Garnett. Every instance of pillage which oc- 
curred during the subsequent invasions in Yirginia was sedu- 
lously magnified and published throughout the South. The 
result of all this was two-fold ; it produced upon the soldiers 
in the field precisely the effect which Lord Dunmore aimed at 
in the early days of the Revolution, when he made the royal 
troops believe that they would be scalped if they fell alive into 
the hands of the "shirtmen;" audit so influenced the pas- 
sions of the people against the northern " Hessians " as cruelly 
to increase the sufiPerings of oui- prisoners. I have seen the 
soldiers of the guard forced to protect prisoners in Richmond 



APPENDir. 109 

from the insults and violence of the citizens, and it was noto- 
rious that any official attempt to treat the federal captives de- 
cently would be universally denounced as soon as it was 
made public. General Lee himself was insulted in one of the 
Richmond papers, because his wife had accepted the protec- 
tion of General McClellan for her household and herself. 

Let me add that the private testimony of refugees in Rich- 
mond was almost unanimous as to the general good conduct 
of our troops, but this was as carefully suppressed, as was con- 
current testimony of the same kind to the damage inflicted 
upon the country people by their southern " defenders," 

Whatever the issue of the pending struggle may be, we 
ought to remember that pillage in war is after all simply open 
robber}'. Probably none of us would take any particular pride 
in calling the attention of his guests to a silver teapot stolen by 
his grandfather from a farm-house during the invasion of 
Canada; and we may surely do our posterity the trivial jus- 
tice to believe that their respect for their ancestors will not be 
diminished by any display on our part of self-command, dig- 
nity, and reverence for those "holy bounds" of which Schil- 
ler sings so earnestly in his Wallenstein. 



Note F— Page 65. 
OPENING OP JAMES RIVER. 

The author speaks of James river as " opened to the fed- 
eral navy" by the destruction of the Merriraac. This is per- 
fectly correct ; but it may be observed that James river was 
never closed to the federal navy till the Merrimac had been 
launched, proved and found far from wanting. The memo- 
rable panic occasioned in Richmond in April, 1861, by the 
news that the " Pawnee" was coming up the river, might have 
been supposed likely to point out to our own Government the 



110 APPENDIX. 

wisdom of tiylng the experiment of a naval excursion from 
Fortress Monroe to Kocketts ; and to the confederates the pro- 
priety of fortifying the river banks. It produced neither the 
nne nor the other effect. 

A couple of war steamers sent up the James when the armv 
of McDowell advanced from Washington, might have neutral- 
ized the southern victory at Bull Run ; and I have the author- 
ity of a southern naval officer for saying that the banks of the 
James were never adequately protected against the passage 
of even a single powerful gunboat until the works at Drewry's 
Bluff were extemporized in May, 1862. These works were 
thrown up so hastily, and so little was known or believed at 
Richmond of their capacity to resist a serious attack, that the 
excitement which reigned throughout tlie city during the dull 
gray morning of the day in which the heavy guns of tl>e at- 
tack and defence were heard sullenly booming down the river, 
more nearly approached a panic than anything else vvhich I 
witnessed during the whole time of my detention there. 

The preparations of the governments, state and confederate, 
for evacuating the city had been hurried forward with great 
earnestness from the time when the sacrifice of I^orfolk and 
the Merrimac became a probable military necessity ; but there 
was such a conflict of councils in both governments that the 
successful passage of Drewry's Bluff would unquestionably 
have brought on a tremendous general catastrophe. 



Note G.— Page 67. 
" THE PARTISAN JACKSON." 

It is singular enough that so many even of those who ought 
to be well informed in respect to the history and present posi- 
tion of the southern leaders sliould persist in writing and talk- 
ing of " Stonewall Jackson " as a " partisan," He is scarcely 



APPENDIX. Ill 

a " partisan," even in the political sense of tliat word, for he 
was by no means a Secessionist in his convictions or his sym- 
pathies, and only joined the southern forces in the field, as I 
have been informed upon very respectable authority, from a 
religious sense of duty to his native State. I do not know that 
it is a greater stretch of charity to concede the possible exist- 
ence of an honest " rebel " than of an honest atheist, and if 
Stonewall Jackson may be supposed to be honest, he belongs 
to the not inconsiderable class of men in the South who would 
draw the sword at the behest of their State as readily against 
the government of Jefferson Davis as against that of Abraham 
Lincoln. A partisan, in the military sense, Jackson has never 
been. He was graduated at West Point with the class of 1842, 
served with distinction in Mexico, and holds the rank of Major- 
G-eneral in the regular army of the " Confederate States." The 
partisan service has not been popular in the South, and most 
of those leaders who won their first spurs as partisans in Ken- 
tucky and Virginia have passed into the regular service as fast 
as they could find or make room for themselves. Turner Ash- 
by v/as a confederate brigadier when he fell in battle, and 
John Morgan now liolds that rank, his second in command 
being an experienced English officer. Colonel George St. Leger 
Grenfell, who resigned his Queen's commission and left a lucra- 
tive post in India, came from Calcutta to Havana, and " ran 
the blockade " into Charleston to put his sword at tke service 
of the South. 

Note H.— Page 6S 
MCDOWELL'S RECALL FROM FREDERICKSBURG. 

The failure of the armies of McDowell and McClellan to 
unite before Richmond surprised the confederate command- 
ers in the latter city more, I think, than any one incident of 
the war. They had endeavored, of course, to bring it about 



112 APPENDIX. 

thougli I liave some reason to doubt whether it was the pri- 
mary object or expectation of "Stonewall" Jackson in his 
dashing Potomac campaign to effect this result. But it was 
not believed possible in Richmond for some days after it had 
demonstrably occurred. The cannon of Fitz-John Porter in 
the battle at Hanover Court House had sounded the knell of 
Richmond in the ears of those who knew the relative positions 
of the two federal armies. I was at that time living in a house 
on the extreme verge of Shockoe Hill, overlooking the line of 
the Yirginia Central Railway, and on the 27th of May I re- 
ceived a visit from an European officer of distinction, then in 
Richmond, who brought me the news of what was going on, 
and said to me, " You will have the first view of the Yankees 
— they will march in on yonder lines ;" pointing to the roads 
which wound away from beyond the crest to our left in the 
direction of Hanover Court House and Ashland. At that 
time the foreign consuls in Richmond had made all necessary 
arrangements for protecting the property of their fellow sub- 
jects ; and almost every body who owned any tobacco or 
flour was eager to shift it, in one way or another, to the ac- 
count of foreign owners. The fall of the city was considered 
inevitable. 

Note I.— Page 72. 
FAIR OAKS. 

The Prince's account of the condition of the confederates 
on the morning of June 1st, rather under than overstates tlie 
case. They were in a perfect chaos of brigades and regiments. 
The roads into Richmond were literall}'- crowded witli strag- 
glers, some throwing away their guns, some breaking them on 
the trees — all with the same story, that their regiments had 
been " cut to pieces " — that the " Yankees were swarming on 
the Chickahominy like bees," and " fighting like devils." In 
two days of the succeeding week the provost-marshal's guard 



APPENDIX. 113 

collected between 4,000 and 5,000 stragglers and sent tliem 
into camp. What had become of the command of the army 
no one knew. By some persons it was reported that Major- 
General Gustavus W. Smith had succeeded Johnston, by 
others, that President Davis in person had taken the reins of 
the army. General Johnston himself was supposed to be 
either actually dead or dying. He had been twice hit before 
he received the final wound which struck him from his horse. 
In falling he had broken two of his ribs, was picked up sense- 
less and covered with blood, put into a hackney coach and 
driven to a house on Church Hill, where he lay between life 
and death for several weeks. The roads in the vicinity were 
covered with tan and all traffic interrupted by chains 
stretched across them near the house which he occupied. 

Had I been aware on that day of the actual state of things 
upon the field, I might easily have driven in a carriage 
through the confederate lines directly into our own camps. 
It was not indeed till several days after the battle that any- 
thing like military order was restored throughout the confed- 
erate positions, or the last of the wounded brought in from the 
recesses of the woods and the intricacies of the secluded path- 
ways in which they had lain dying a hundred deaths within 
four or five miles of the city and its hospitals. It is impossi- 
ble to exaggerate the difficulties attending a general action in 
such a country. One gentleman who distinguished himself 
by his assiduity in seeking and bringing in the wounded from 
the field, told me that on three difi'erent occasions, within as 
many days, he had been forced to pass by wounded men, his 
carriage being absolutely filled and he walking by its side, 
that on each occasion he had noted as well as he could the 
position of the sufierers, and that on each occasion when he 
returned to seek for them he was compelled to give up the 
search in despair, so absolutely impossible was it to identify 
particular paths in that labyrinth of swamps and trees. 
8 



114 APrSNDIX. 

I do not think the Prince exaggerates the losses of the 
enemy in this sanguinary flight. There were published in the 
Kichmond papers, detailed brigade and regimental reports of 
the losses in sixty out of seventy-two organizations, regiments, 
battalions and companies mentioned as taking part in the en- 
gagements. I computed these losses as they were published. 
The sum total was 6,732 killed, wounded and missing. The 
"Richmond Enquirer" nevertheless, which had published these 
very lists, relying I suppose upon the arithmetical indolence 
of its readers, coolly announced the entire loss of the confed- 
erates on the 31st May and 1st June to have been but 2,300 
men ! The official report was about 4,300. 

As to the rain storm of May 30th, the Prince may well 
speak of it as " terrible." Never, even in the tropics, have I 
seen a more sudden and sweeping deluge. The creek which 
flowed at the bottom of the hill below the house in which I 
lived, and over which in ordinary times, a boy might easily 
leap, filled the valley on the morning of May 31st, with a 
shallow lake more than 100 yards in width. 

Many confederate officers consoled themselves for the re- 
sults of the battle of Fair Oaks, or Seven Pines as it is called 
at the South, by the consideration that in wounding General 
Johnston, and so compelling Mr. Davis to allow the command 
of the main army in the field to devolve upon General Lee, 
the federals had rendered them a great service. This was be- 
cause the southern army under Johnston, was known to be 
Bufiering severely in numbers and morale from the same lax- 
ity in organization for which the Prince, in so friendly a 
spirit, finds fault with our own forces. Lee was considered, I 
should say, to have more of the talent essential for organiza- 
tion than any man in the service of the South. 



APPENDIX. 115 

NOTE K— Page 86. 
THE SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES. 

The phases of public feeling and of military opinion in 
Richmond during the progress of the operation by which 
General McClellan transferred his army from the Chickahomi- 
ny to the James, were highly interesting to me at the time, 
and it may be worth while for me briefly to describe them 
now. 

Let me premise by stating however, that the Prince is cer- 
tainly in error, when he speaks of General Beauregard as 
" lending the assistance of his capacity and his prestige " to 
the Southern army at this critical moment. General Beaure- 
gard was then at Eufaula, in Alabama, recruiting his health, 
shattered by two arduous campaigns, one in the East and one 
in the "West. Yery few, if any of the troops from his army 
were in Virginia. Reinforcements had been coming into the 
city for several days previously to the 25th, in very consider- 
able numbers, but they appeared to me to be mainly made up 
of new troops, and were generally understood to be so. 

Of the battle with Hooker on the 25th, in which the con- 
federates were defeated, nothing was heard in Richmond save 
the sound of the cannonade, and to that we had all become 
so much accustomed as not to be much excited thereby. The 
negroes, who always, by son^e mysterious system of commu- 
nication with the surrounding country, contrived to have news 
in advance of the published accounts, and whose reports I 
generally found to be quite as accurate as those of the " Dis- 
patch " and the " Examiner," whispered indeed on the morn- 
ing of the 26th in the servants' halls, from which the story 
soon ran up stairs, that something not altogether agreeable 
had happened the day before. But the popular rumor was, 
that a slight skirmish had taken place, with the inevitable re- 
sult of " skedaddled " and captured Yankees. 



116 APPENDIX. 

About eight o'clock on the evening of the next day, the 26th, 
when after four hours of the nearest and most vivid firing, 
both with great guns and musketry that had yet been heard, 
the white wreatlis of the curling cannon-smoke began to be 
drifted by the wind up the Shockoe valley into the heart of 
the city, and the smell of the gun-powder could be plainly 
perceived in Capitol Square, affairs took a more serious turn. 
I witnessed the fight of this evening myself from a favorable 
position on the outskirts of the city. I saw the confederate 
lines recoil, and our own artillery advance until between 
eight and nine o'clock. I began to think that we had really 
reached the crisis of the siege, and that Richmond was on the 
point of falling into the hands of the army of the Union. A 
young ofiicer of artillery, a West PoiLter from the old army, 
and belonging then to a detached corps of the C. S. A., who 
joined me in my post of observation about that time, and 
recognized with me the fact that the confederates were fight- 
ing on a line considerably in the rear of the positions which 
they had held about four p. m., borrowed my glass, looked 
long and earnestly through the deepening twilight on' the scene 
before us, and then, turning to me, said m a hurried way, — 
" they will certainly be here to-night," and then, half laughing 
with an air of somewhat aflfected indifference added, as he tap- 
ped his light grey uniform coat, " had n't I better take this off 
and ' skedaddle ' to Danville ?" 

By nine o'clock, however, and, so far as we could see, with 
no change in the relative strength of the firing on either side, 
the federal artillery still maintaining its plain and tremendous 
preponderance — the line of the federal fire began to recede. 
By half-past nine the affair was over, and after an hour or two 
of spasmodic and still receding discharges, mainly of shell, 
which burned in magnificent curves against the darkening 
sky, e'^erything was once more quiet. 

The next day was an anxious cue to the people of Rich- 



APPENDIX. , 117 

raond. It was evident now that a general action was either 
. immiient or actually in progress. The stories from the battle 
field of Gaines's Mill came in, announcing a great victory, and 
anxiety gradually turned into exultation, which grew as the 
prisoners began to arrive in small squads, and the people be- 
came convinced that the army of McClellan was actually re- 
treating. 

For the next day or two, this mood was in the ascendant, 
and nothing was talked of but the capture or annihilation of 
the whole "invading horde." Much was made of the two 
captured Generals Eeynolds and McCall, who naturally grew 
into four, five or six, according to the strength of the speak- 
er's patriotism, and of his imagination. General McClellan 
was killed three or four times, and General Sumner was cer- 
tainly wounded and a prisoner at Savage's station. 

Jackson's corps, which had not been engaged as the Prince 
seems to suppose on the 26th with McCall, the fight of that 
day being maintained on the confederate side by the troops 
of A. P. Hill and Longstreet in the advance, had come into 
action upon the federal retreat on the 28th, and this intelli- 
gence of itself would have stifliced to convince the most 
skeptical that the doom of the Yankees was sealed, and that 
the tobacco warehouses of Richmond would be too small to 
contain the prisoners that were about to arrive. 

By the 30th, however, it began to be whispered that all was 
not going satisfactorily. It was then known to a few that 
McClellan had not been cut to pieces in detail ; that on the 
contrary, he had succeeded in effecting the concentration of 
his whole army, and was moving on a line of retreat whicli, as 
it was not thoroughly understood, might perhaps, prove to be 
a new line of advance. The fearful tidings of the repulse and 
slaughter at Malvern Hill at last forced its way through the 
popular hope and passion, and the news that the gunboats in 
the river l\ad joined their fire with that of the artillery of 



118 . APPENDIX. 

the federal laud forces converted the rejoicings of the Yir- 
ginians into doubts and disappointments. For some time it 
ivas supposed McClellan would resume his attack on the line 
of the Charles City road ; then, that he would shift his whole 
force to the south side and throw himself irresistibly from City 
Point upon Petersburg. The results of the terrible six days' 
fighting were not regarded as at all decisive, and General Lee, 
while honored for his success in relieving the immediate pres- 
sure upon the city, and in " chastising the Yankees " tre- 
mendously, was loudly charged with having been outwitted 
by an adversary whose escape he ought to have rendered im- 
possible. 

The final movement which transferred the whole federal 
army from Harrison's Landing to the Potomac, and which 
was going on when I left Richmond was hardly credited at 
that time in that city. It was certainly felt that if real, it 
would be a substantial relief from all formidable operations 
against the place, at least for the next year. 

As to the confederate forces engaged in these sanguinary 
battles before Richinond, it is my impression that the armies 
united under Lee before tGe amval of Jackson from the Shen- 
andoah, numbered 90,000 men ; and the Prince's estimate of 
Jackson's force at 30,000, I take to be not far from the truth. 

Tlie prisoners taken from our army, including the wounded, 
whom we w^re forced to abandon, were estimated at bet\yeen 7 
and 8,000, of whom only about 4,500, however, were actually 
known to have been sent on to Richmond. On their own 
side, the most candid and best-informed confederates admitted 
a total loss in killed, wounded, and missing of about 16,000 
men. 






'''mMK(<&wMM:^^^'^m:^ 






M(&3Z<^^L^-:. 



^mm 


















-^■^ ' <^ XSr^Clfc" <:«:rr^:C/C- ':'^m(:^('^' «lCg05S 









^S^^^>^^iP^ifyiamwfc^i(^M(i^'U^mm.lMi(L t^<ML C'< 



l^'^M '^'Tt" 









^iBSEtiiSmfGL^G^BBL^ 



jitZim€MiS^^x:mM^ 



"<f ■i4iij^^t^>i.Nysi&. . 



.v...Si:m^:c^^::- 



j^t«sJ^^a£S 





















WM-a(:cr^m^L4M^- 









w&^^ 



^ ^mzm^ 



"mmms^BCS^^ 



o 














■ .1. 111111111111111111111 

^4 013 706 638 5 







■1'- ^ • • 's?' ^'"'^^ 










t"'-'^ii 



